The Spy as a Fictional Character in Cold War Literature

Universitatea Dunrea de Jos Galai
Facultatea de Litere i Teologie

Specializarea _______________
Lucrare de licen / disertaie
Coordonator tiinific _______________

Student _______________
Galai
Anul
1
Universitatea Dunrea de Jos Galai

Facultatea de Litere i Teologie
Specializarea _______________
Lucrare de licen / disertaie

The Spy as a fictional character in Cold War literature
Coordonator tiinific _______________

Student _______________
Galai
Anul
2
CONTENTS
Introduction:
The aim of the thesis............................................................................4
Chapter I.
The spy hero.........................................................................................6
1. The spy in history and reality............................................................6
2. The spy in modern literature...........................................................12
Chapter II.
The cold war background for European spy fiction......................18
Chapter III.
The British masters of espionage novels..........................................25
1. Ian Fleming From Russia with Love.............................................25
2. John Le Carr The Spy Who Came in from the Cold....................33
3. Len Deighton Funeral in Berlin...................................................44
Chapter IV.
Narrative style..................................................................................53
1. Similarities in their narrative style..................................................53
2. Differences in their narrative technique..........................................56
Conclussion.......................................................................................62
Bibliography......................................................................................64
Introduction: The aim of the thesis

The thesis carying the title The spy as a fictional character in Cold War literature
is concerned with the literary genre of espionage fiction during the Post World War II
period. The reason why I chose this topic for my thesis is that I have always been
intrigued by stories of espionage, both real and fictitious.The Cold War was the Golden
Age of espionage fiction as it provided the perfect setting for the spy novel to grow. The
purpuose of the thesis is to introduce new readers to the literary genre and offer them a
picture of the spy as a fictional character from a social,moral and psychological
perspective. For this I have selected the three authors that, in my oppinion, are the most
representetive to the British Cold War spy literature( Ian Fleming, John Le Carr and Len
Deighton) and their landmark novels (From Russia with love; The Spy who came in from
the cold; Funeral in Berlin). Each of these three authors manage to offer unique
depictions of the world of espionage and its protagonists.The thesis is divided into several
chapters which deal with the theme of the Cold War spy novel.
The first chapter is divided into two parts that focus on the historical and the
fictional background of espionage.
The first part deals with the historical background and the purpose of espionage
and of the spy. The activity of espionage can be traced back to ancient China, all the way
through Medieval times, Victorian age and finishing with the modern times.
The second part is dedicated to the birth of the spy as a fictional character. As a
literary genre, spy fiction springs from detective fiction. The birth of the spy novel was
influenced by the social and political instability prior to World War I. During the Cold
War, spy fiction reached a climax when former intelligence officers started writing
autobiographies or works of fiction about the intelligence community.
The second chapter contains information regarding the Cold War, a conflict of
beliefs and ideology between the West and the East, capitalism and communism. It aims
to offer a better understanding of how the international relations and the feeling of
national insecurity contributed to the rise of the genre. The Cold War provided the
initiative for technology to develop at an unprecedented pace, as a result the technology
developed during this period attracted a lot of attention from the public, media and
literature.
The third chapter is divided into three parts and is dedicated to the analysis of the
three British authors of the Cold War era that brought significant contribution to the
literary genre's progression ( Ian Fleming, John Le Carr and Len Deighton), focusing on
just three of their landmark novels ( From Russia with love; The Spy who came in from
the cold; Funeral in Berlin).
The fourth chapter concentrates its attention on the narrative style and techniques
employed by the authors in the three aforementioned novels.This chapter is divided into
two parts, dealing with the similarities and differences in the novels. Even though these
books all belong to the same genre and have many things in common they also have
distinctive features that are typical to their respective authors.
The last chapter summarizes the facts and ideas of the theme in order to provide a
perspective of the nature of espionage fiction and its development in relation to the social
and political events that occurred over time.
Chapter I
THE SPY HERO
1. The spy in history and reality
Ever since ancient times1, the spy played an important part in the development of
the life of mankind, at first dealing only with studying or prospecting the soil ahead,
before establishing a new settlement, hence it was mostly an explorer or a colonizer (and
spying was more of a practical activity); or later under the guise of the emissary, much
like a strategic warrior, the spy was meant to launch diplomacy and advise on rival tactics
(this type of spying being more of a material and political activity).
Both the spy as explorer-colonizer and the spy as emissary were extraordinary
people, endowed with special characteristics, such as: sense of direction, courage,
intelligence, analytical mind, good judge of character, sociable, outgoing in public, but
cautious and reserved in regards with their condition, mysterious even about themselves,
with a great memory for details and foreign customs and languages, good sense of
humour, skilled in sports and fighting practices.
But another category of spy was also common in romances and love affairs,
playing the role of a detective for the cheated spouse in adulterous couples, simply
observing and informing the parents about ineligible partners hiding as lovers, or as a
messenger, helping young people in love to set dates and intermediate their
correspondence.
One of the earliest textbooks on the arts of war, but also espionage and the
organization of a secret service (Ping Fa, or The Art of War) was written around 450 BC,
in China, by the military general Sun Tzu, who stated that: Knowledge of the enemys
disposition can only be obtained from other men2.
In fact, the word spy, for which there is a single character in the Chinese
language, had as its original meaning in ancient China that of a chink, a crack or
Michael Barrett, Journal of Defence and Diplomacy ( February 1984) Espionage is the worlds
second oldest profession and just as honourable as the first.
2
Sun Tzu. The Art of War (Project Gutenberg e-text, 1910; http://all.net/books/tzu/tzu.html).
1
crevice; therefore the earliest Chinese conception of a spy is one who peeps through a
crack. However this is somewhat a one-dimensional definition of espionage.3
Spying has to do with finding other peoples secrets, plans or vulnerabilities and
use them to ones advantage; therefore it also implies eavesdropping, exchanging of
hidden information by verbal messages, notes or signs, coding them, actual disguise or
involving an alias (false title, estate, occupation), pretending to be someone else so as to
get inside, working with an insider, corrupted or planted, stalking or staking out.
One significant proof that the spy and spying were very much realities of the
Medieval and Renaissance times is that all through the Eastern and Western Courts 4, we
have examples of emperors, pharaohs or kings that had deaf and mute servants, so as not
to be spied on, and sometimes the person caught spying for the enemy, if left alive, was
punished by having his tongue cut off.
There is an entire range of objects that revolves around spying, used as means for
seeing or hearing mysterious information, such as: false mirrors, peeping-holes through
paintings or doors, secrets passages, screens or revolving sideboards used for cover,
hidden chambers and hatches5. Here we include the spyglass or binoculars as well, that
appeared ever since the Enlightenment; the mirror and lenses brought closer things found
at a distance in space6. But also instruments of disguise, such as: wigs, beards, capes,
hats, gloves, glasses, make up, and costumes in general.
During the Victorian age, the covered mirror or hidden self-portrait, as if they had
a life of their own, are spaces through which one could be spied on, but present also the
illusion of self-criticism and scrutiny. They have a double function of reflection and
contemplation. Also, the closed room, laboratory or the forbidden attic entertain the
mystery and danger elements, which trigger thoughts of uncovering the ultimate secrete
of the perfect murder or of the prisoner. In a myse-en-abyme effect, the reader-witness
3
Brett Woods, Neutral Ground - A Political History of Espionage Fiction (New York: Algora
Publishing, 2008) 6.
4
Sabinne Melchior-Bonnet, Istoria oglinzii (Bucureti: Editura Univers, 2000) 177: La Versailles,
zidurile au ochi, iar galeriile mbrcate n oglinzi dispun de o vizibilitate de temut. n viziunea lui Saint
Simon, Curtea este format dintr-o mulime de iscoade care spioneaz secretele tuturor i care sunt la
rndul lor spionate.
5
Sabinne Melchior-Bonnet, Istoria Oglinzii, 208: A vedea fr a fi vzut, iat un vis nscut dintr-o
dorin ambigu i care afirm statutul privilegiat al privirii.
6
Sabinne Melchior-Bonnet, Istoria Oglinzii, 298: Poi de asemenea s vezi n tain, fr s te dai
n vileag, ceea ce se petrece n deprtare.
becomes also an accomplice in spying and wishes to reveal at the same time with the bold
character the unexplored territory.
Towards the 19th century, the spy began to participate more actively in the
political and economical lives, spreading worldwide, being skilled not only in theatrics
and performance, but also trained in riding, driving, flying, or different types of combat,
and even speaking fluently various languages. Yet, due to certain moral and social
prejudices at the time, the spy in Victorian society was associated with the equivalent of a
sexual pervert; hence he was not viewed as a hero, and the practice of espionage was
thought to be distasteful and shameful. Moreover it was ignored in literature. Thus, the
spy continued to play its role as finder of intentions, discoverer of information, and
sometimes business secrets, so as either to deter armed attacks, or steal ideas and
inventions, in the mercantile activities. His masks and instruments refined with times. For
example, the cane, cape or topper were common accessories of the aristocrats during
those days, but the spy could hide a dagger at the edge of the cane, or simply appear
dressed in drag or as a commoner. Rings could be made with a secret compartment to
hide sleeping drugs, or poison, used as a final escape from the enemy.
In modern times, the spy tells secrets from the enemy, sends wrong information to
the enemy for confusion (as diversion), warns in advance his people, stages attempts and
obtains substantial evidence on paper or microfilm of maps, minutes of meetings and
photos, using button-hole mini camera, pen with invisible ink, or special infrared glasses
etc. The spy does not wear a uniform, but rather plain clothes. However his garments may
also be a costume or a suit with special handy devices. The gun is concealed underarm in
a holster. And for example, even the shoes can hide a blade in the tip (poisonous or not),
activated by a press in the heel, that easily transforms into a weapon to escape from being
captured.
In the 20th century, the practice of spying reached its peak during World War I and
World War II, when spies were used at decoding radio messages in foreign languages,
and then from infiltrating ministries, launching decoy missions by parachute or planting
clues, to even stealing food transports or the war correspondence, and last but not least to
giving biased press releases.
During the Cold War, there was a transformation in the public perception of the
spying activity, by making it more socially acceptable, attractive and using highly
motivated individuals in espionage.
With the 21st century, the Intelligence Services have turned almost too common.
They are no longer a taboo or a curiosity, everybody knows in each country there are two
ministries, internal and external, working with secret state affairs, but apparently the
secrets are no longer that big. It may be just the illusion that during peace, spying is not
useful. But nowadays, spying has to do more with controlling the hierarchy of superpowers and the economical espionage. Hence, it supervises fair-play economical
practices, the overall exploitation of natural resources, the observance and preservation of
the indiscriminate evolution of religious, political, ethnic or gender activities and also the
control of immigration against possible acts of terrorism. I think currently we witness a
more underground spying, at the level of computing, and there is a positive aspect to it
that regards safekeeping personal data of the online users and web surfing in general, and
a negative aspect that relates to online piracy, cyber-bullying and hackers.
We can differentiate between two levels of spying, the first done by intelligence
authorities to get evidence for investigations, in tune with national and international
security and interests. The second level is done by potential criminals, in the search for
gathering real information so as to withdraw money from other peoples accounts,
blackmail the tapped victims with details of their private lives, etc.
The motivation for working as a spy on both levels could be of various nature: for
money, personal benefits, political beliefs, revenge, adventure. A certain person may be
approached by an organisation to become a spy simply by chance and because he
displays some particular skills needed in the business, or one may train from early
adulthood to take up this profession. Actually the two levels of activity mentioned above
may at times collaborate, as surprising as this may sound. It is common knowledge that
after the recent Anonymous hacking of important websites of military Ministries, or even
Embassies, as a sign of protesting, namely to show that they were able to crack the codes
and go into their database, some of the criminal authors of the attacks were hired and
started working for CIA and INTERPOL to counteract international cyber crime.
Working undercover means providing a genuine identity or presence to the person

used as a spy or investigator. However, some of the methods used during the legal
undercover operations are actually employed by the criminals as well (for e.g. forging
passports, erasing car plates, using untraceable weapons, namely without serial number
so as to remain secret and invisible in the end).
Currently, forging passports and money or getting weapons from the black market
are quite easy tasks unfortunately, due to the improvements of technology. (Bear in mind
also, that recently, last-generation 3D printers made it possible to get a working,
unregistered gun within minutes, simply using a drawing of it). Yet, the violent actions of
chasing and killing dangerous agents are more or less dormant. Since the society today
cares very much for appearance and reputation, an undesirable character, possibly
dangerous politically, or an inconvenient competitor in the market can also be ruled out
from the race, destroyed not physically, but by ruining its reputation.
There is a quotation from the famous French General Fouch at some point in Ian
Flemings From Russia with love that states exactly this: It is no good killing a man,
unless you also destroy his reputation. (page 47). Moreover, in the above-mentioned
novel, the Russians knew any paid assassin could kill Bond if properly instructed. But
their goal was to destroy Bonds iconic image of superhero, who always managed to
baffle their bombed attacks and beat them single-handedly almost, hence they plan to lure
him in a foreign country whose press and radio they have influence upon. This
conclusion works very much even today in espionage and politics.
Similar to this there is also a mention in John le Carrs The Spy who Came in
from the Cold, where Alec Leamas is involved in one last tricky mission and dangerous
pretence just for the sake of Mundts moral rehabilitation. Control needed this (even at
the cost of Alecs life) to have Mundt still working for them, but Fielder was very close to
uncovering the later as a double agent for the British services.
While in Len Deightons novel, Funeral to Berlin, nothing is as it seems in terms
of public recognition, appearance, fame and morality. The scientist Semitsa is said to be
important for the West, as being a great enzyme specialist, who needs to be rescued from
East Germany. When in fact we learn that at the same time the Israeli Secret Service (the
Mossad) was interested in him, since they wanted to make him use his research on
10
insecticides to create gas nerves. Another case of duality and ambiguity is Vulkan, who is
a French-German of Jew ancestry, formerly a prisoner in a concentration camp, who took
the name of a guard, to cover up his origins and works on commission for both the British
MI6 and the German (Secret Service).
In general terms, if the spy works for an authority, he is referred to as an agent.
When an agent offers voluntarily to collaborate with the rival intelligence agency, it is
referred to as a defector (such as Red Grant). If an authority approaches an ordinary
individual and asks for a spying favour (one time thing), the latter is called a pawn.
When an agent is placed under a false identity inside the rival authority, he is intended to
work as a mole, gathering information for his initial employer. And eventually, if he
shifts sides or sends secrets both ways, he had turned into a double-agent.
The spy as occupation has no gender or age specialisation. It usually helps if the
person in case, as cunning as may be is however very ordinary, frail, gentle or almost
helpless looking, so as to be beyond suspicion7. It is recommended that a secret agent
should not have visible birthmarks, tattoos or speech defects, again so as not to stand out
and be hard to remember or describe in their simplicity, or rather said their plainness.
(But curious enough, James Bond had a white, three-inch scar on his right cheek, which
did not ruin his sex appeal, and made him look more interesting and authoritative.)
Agents do not know each other among colleagues, except for their superiors or
connections during missions, provided they ask and reply correctly to the password code
of the month. They are trained to be usually lonely, always on the run, have military
background following orders and routines, so they have to be quite docile and reliable at
the same time. However, the more modern, male spy working in the field is quite the
opposite. It does not blow its cover simply because it is so prominent, arrogant even, rich,
hi-tech skilled and full of gadgets, interesting and independent, that is often mistook for a
media tycoon, a cinema star or a playboy with an inheritance. And on the opposite side of
this category, we also have the spy who is a computer nerd working from inside the office
Sun Tzu, The Art of War. As living spies, we must recruit men who are intelligent, but appear to
be stupid; who seem to be dull, but are strong in heart; men who are agile, vigorous, hardy and brave; wellversed in lowly matters and able to endure hunger, cold, filth and humiliation(Project Gutenberg e-text,
1910; http://all.net/books/tzu/tzu.html).
7
11
only, as a genius in IT (good at networks, telephone barring, GPS surveillance, security

camera frequencies etc).
2. The spy in modern literature

Like we said in the beginning, spying has a utilitarian, life-saving component, in
dealing with anticipation of dangers or battles, and a more lucrative one, when it aims at
achieving fame, material gain or stealing recognition, and it is about revealing mysteries
and hidden recipes.
Historically speaking, the practice of espionage is generally directed to obtaining
information or neutralizing property or people in the homeland or conquered territory of a
particular enemy. Due to the danger, scandal and illegality around espionage activities,
until late 19th century, the spy as fictional character, be it hero or villain, was considered
distasteful and ignored in literature. Yet, despite the early presence of secret agents in
history worldwide, the fictional literature of their exploits real and imagined has been
primarily a twentieth century phenomenon.8
The birth of the spy novel was influenced to a great extent by the insecurity of the
social and political climate in the period prior to World War I, when terrorist actions
spread out in Europe. Ever since the first years of the 20th century, Great Britain, as the
homeland of spy fiction, began to record the increasingly menacing danger represented
by the German Reich. The actual political conflicts between nations have inspired to a
great extent spy fiction, in which often an agent is capable of solving international crises
during a secret and dangerous mission.
In the early 1900s, the espionage novel emerged from a firmly British base, and
British writers were to hold a near monopoly on the genre for many decades.9
As a literary genre, spy fiction springs from the detective fiction (pinpointed by
Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes), coupled with elements of thriller and political
discourse. It has a simple structure: introduces the hero, provides difficulties (a direct or
indirect threat to someone) dotted with a lot of tension, action and excitement, and
8
9
Brett Woods, Neutral Ground - A Political History of Espionage Fiction, 8.

Brett Woods, Neutral Ground - A Political History of Espionage Fiction, 10.
12
resolves such obstacles in violent twist of events or confrontations. However, a detective

story is based entirely on the character of the detective who solves the mystery or crime
and he can survive indefinitely. Whereas in a spy story where the main figure is a spy, he
or she cannot have a lengthy operational life because sooner or later is discovered. In fact
even if the central figure in the spy novel is a secret agent, there are also other important
characters, surrounding him or helping him with vital clues or plans, who may be:
intelligence chiefs sitting at a desk in London or Moscow, controlling a network of spies,
but not doing any spy themselves, contacts in allied or enemy territory enabling his
mission, a loyal secretary acting as personal assistant, who provides him with plane
tickets, hotel reservations and forged papers, the unassuming receptionist in a remote
hotel or the discreet, or on the contrary, suspicious landlord.
In fact, speaking of spy fiction, we refer to spy-catchers, as well as spies, of
double and triple agents, of hired killers, planters of misinformation and sometimes even
of that unassuming little fellow at the corner antique book shop who operates a kind of
letter-box or dead drop for agents.10
The period of World War II brought again into focus the image of the patriot-spy,
acting to save his country, an example in this sense being the novels built around the
danger represented by the Soviet and Hitlerist espionage. This model is continued in the
first novel published by Ian Fleming, Casino Royale (1953), which illustrated the line of
the heroic spy fantasy. Gradually, James Bond, Flemings main character, becomes a
hero typical of the Cold War.
Even though he used to be an agent, in Flemings novels, the world of espionage
is somewhat idealized, focusing on the spectacular aspect of the spying technique, which
made possible the creation of anti-Bond characters in the novels of John Le Carr and
Len Deighton, inspired by the geo-political conflicts characteristic to the Cold War. Their
main characters are no longer heroes, but pawns on a chess board, who stood out
through efficiency and pragmatism.11 Or as the main character in The Spy Who Came in
From the Cold says: we do disagreeable things so that ordinary people can sleep
Katy McCormick, Donald and Fletcher, Spy Fiction: A Connoisseurs Guide, (New York: Facts on
File, 1990) 3.
11
Alexandru Popescu, Cinci milenii de spionaj (Trgovite: Editura Cetatea de Scaun, 2012) 383.
10
13
peacefully. At the same time, the techniques of conspiracy are better presented and the
political analysis more nuanced.
Spy fiction reached a climax of published books mainly after the world wars,
when former officers in the British Intelligence and later in the American Secret Services
as well, started writing memories under the guise of fiction.
The well-deserved peace after World War II, but fragile economical and political
relations instated after signing the truce provided in the mind of society the background
for finding answers and expressing fears for what the future holds. An explanation for
this avalanche of spy fiction at that exact moment would be that reading spy novels
releases tension.12
During the Cold War period, the autobiographies or works of fiction written about
the intelligence community and spying turned the spy into a hero of the public, in a
simplistic view of the world divided between the good represented by the Western
democracies confronting the bad, that is: the Soviet Union and its Communist satellite
states.
The 20th century spy as fictional character is a hero of the suspense. He can be at
times like a detective, observing and reporting, or simply the romantic character with a
mission he always achieves in the end. He shoots and kills his targets, wrecks cars while
being chased, blows up buildings and destroys rooms escaping, but the reader
sympathizes with him and cannot judge him for these since his mission was necessary to
save the world and he was merely running away from the bad guys, those who try to
capture and silence him.
Ian Fleming (1908-1964) is the creator of James Bond, the fictional counterespionage British agent coded 007, the double 0 meaning was active and licensed to kill
during operations. Having worked as officer in the British Naval Intelligence during the
war, Fleming brings realism in his great prose through the detailing of spying activity, but
in a way that appealed to the audience of the post-war society, insisting on blending sex
and political threats, with conspiracy, card games, fancy locations and violence in a
casual, refined way.
12
Brett Woods, Neutral Ground - A Political History of Espionage Fiction 11.
14
In the James Bond series of novels by Fleming, the exotic locations and intrigue,
with plenty opportunity for sexual conquests, as setting for glamorous espionage
activities was meant to offer a reassuring political message: that the Cold War could be
lived with and nothing had changed the essential realities of supremacy13, particularly
regarding Britain as a great (former imperial) force. With the success of this series, there
came also the trend of more successful motion pictures based on the same character,
(even thirty years after the death of the author), James Bond as male idol thus entering
the gallery of pop culture phenomena as famous as Tarzan or Walt Disney characters.
While Fleming created the pattern for older, heroic and clubland spy stories, in the
early 1960s the new, ominous realities of the Cold War (like the downing of an American
U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union in 1960 or the Soviet deployment of nuclear
missiles in Cuba in 1962) offered a different perspective for diplomatic relations and a
very different style of espionage fiction appears as presented by two emerging writers
Len Deighton and John Le Carr, who eventually dominate the genre for the next forty
years. The latter authors look back to the interwar years to reflect upon issues of intrigue,
duplicity and treachery, living all along the traumas of the Cold War years, the Vietnam
War, the rise of political protest and growing disenchantment with big government.14
John Le Carr is the pen name for David John Moore Cornwell (1931-), who
worked as officer in the Intelligence Corps MI5 and the Foreign Office MI6 of the British
Army and as German language interrogator of people who crossed the Iron Curtain to the
West for the British Intelligence during 1950s and 60s, but resigned after starting to
write fiction and also due to the success of his bestseller, The Spy Who Came in from
the Cold. His espionage novels are commentaries on the politics of intelligence, seen
according to the dichotomy of the politics of power and of commerce, with an insight into
the archetypal bureaucracy and the corruption and access to secrets that reside in the
hierarchical structure.
The main character in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is Alec Leamas, one of
the most tragic characters in espionage fiction, former head of British Intelligence in
Berlin station, loyal agent, now cynical, disappointed and burned-out from his lifetime
13
14

15
experience of corruption and betrayal surrounding him, who chooses in the end to
sacrifice himself knowingly for professional reasons at the Berlin Wall, resenting his
superiors choice to exploit him in the operational plans, only to maintain the matter of
facts. He could not continue living as a pawn in the machinations of the Cold War era
espionage activities.
Le Carrs professional secret agent is confronted with an increasingly ineffective
bureaucracy and has to take action in the field against matters of life or death for him.
The loss of touch with our human nature and the consequent tendency to engage in
meaningless, but destructive action are expressive of the human condition in the latter
half of the twentieth century.15
Len Deighton (1929-), who serviced as a photographer in the Royal Air Forces
Special Investigation Branch, started writing first military history and then espionage
fiction. He became famous with his first novel The Ipcress File (1962) that challenged the
Bond formula.
His second novel Funeral in Berlin (1964), as another story of his hero, Harry
Palmer, increased his reputation. It is a detailed attempt to smuggle a defecting East
German biologist out of Berlin. Deightons hero arranges the plan of the defection,
getting help from a high ranking Russian agent, former Nazi intelligence officers and a
freelance agent of doubtful allegiance. The technical details provided in the account
(same as in John Le Carrs case) in a very entertaining and subtle way seem to want to
educate the reader about the facts and routines of espionage practices. But it is Flemings
merit to have first grown a public for this type of fiction, reviving popular interest in spy
novel, regardless of the numerous imitations, parodies and critical or fictional reactions
that followed him.
In more recent espionage fiction, spying is more about political interests and
terrorism or conspiracy formulas and the danger they pose to the West (Eric van
Lustbader, The Bourne Ascendency, 2014), while the plot involves secrets threats of
nuclear attacks in the Middle East and Far East (Charles Cumming, A Colder War, 2014),
the problem of the international arms trade and arming of those involved in the Arab
revolt (Stella Rimmington, Close Call, 2014), the training or retiring of security
15
16
specialists (Adam Brookes, Night Heron, 2014) or avoiding imminent religious world
wars (Olen Steinhauer, The Cairo Affair, 2014).
This work is intended to analyze merely the three named British authors of the
Cold War era that brought significant contribution to this literary genres progression (i.e.
Ian Fleming, John Le Carr and Len Deighton), focusing on just three of their landmark
novels (From Russia with love; The Spy who came in from the cold; Funeral in Berlin). In
doing so, the paper neither claims to be exhaustive, nor wishes to conceal its potential
arbitrary omissions.
17
Chapter II.
The Cold War background for European spy fiction
As mentioned in the introduction, espionage fiction is indeed a peepshow: a brief
glimpse into the dark underside of political discourse.16 Although it is directly connected
to historical realities, espionage fiction has its own mythology. Quite often espionage
fiction creates a counter-history or an alternative, fictional one.
The Cold War was a diplomatic term to suggest inertia and balance of the
superpower relations between East and West in the aftermath of Word War II. Historians
have not fully agreed on the dates, but it is commonly considered to refer to the period
between 1947 until 1991. However, globally that same period was characterized by
ongoing armed aggression elsewhere (in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, parts of Africa
and Latin America, and even Eastern Europe); but the historical records seem to favour
the Western experience and hence is highly subjective. According to John Mason, it
should be better referred to as the longest period of peace in the twentieth century17,
one in which the Soviet Union and the USA dedicated themselves to the successful
prevention of a Third World War. This notion, that world war should be defined not by
the global reach of a conflict, but solely by great power participation, emerged most
famously in the post-revisionist work of John Lewis Gaddis. While accepting that
limited wars occurred, Gaddis urges us to believe that major war was absent between
1945 and 1989: this was, he claims, the longest period of stability in relations among the
great powers since the days of Metternich and Bismarck, and should be viewed not as
the Cold War at all, but as a rare and fondly remembered Long Peace.18
16
17

Andrew Hammond, Cold War Literature Writing the Global Conflict (New York: Routledge,
2006) 2.
18
Andrew Hammond, Cold War Literature Writing the Global Conflict 2
18
The roots of the Cold War metaphor are actually found in the mid-1940s, before
East-West hostilities emerged. Although frequently sourced in a speech given by Bernard
Baruch, the US Representative on the Atomic Energy Commission, in 1947, George
Orwell had already used it in You and the Atom Bomb, an article from 1945, published
in the British newspaper Tribune. Viewing the possession of atomic weaponry by two or
three super-states as conducive to tyranny, Orwell nevertheless foresees a paralysis in
international affairs, as each atomic power becomes unconquerable and enters a
permanent state of cold war with its neighbours. The articles vision of an end to
large-scale wars was understandable, given its context in the months following the end
of the Second World War.
However society was dominated by a growing suspicion in everyone around as
heightened surveillance and indoctrination occurred. The manipulation of language and
imagery in the public sphere was a major cause of the scepticism and paranoia that many
view as defining features of Cold War culture. With some economies still recovering,
(while others overflow), raw materials such as sugar, flour, meat etc were rationed and
luxurious items like spirits and cigarettes became currency almost in the black market,
possibly even to bribe the police, sentries or informants. Even though the actual war is
over, there is still curfew on certain streets in East Berlin and people should avoid being
outside after the signal.
The Britain of the post-war years was a country in which almost everything was
rationed: In a very real sense these austerity years were a threshold to the whole first
post-war era: rock-hard and grey, whitened maybe by dedication and labour There
was still a strong sense of civic loyalty (to the monarchy, the police), and the period was
characterised by a marked time-lag compared to the United States. Prosperity was much
later in coming. Only toward the end of the fifties did people finally begin to think of
Britain in terms of Galbraiths phrase, the affluent society. There was still a sense of
optimistic consensus and a feeling that Britain was cosily separate, with its humour,
tolerance and decency. But there was also a new sense of an attack on British insularity,
comfortableness, stereotypical assumptions and parochialism, and part of what these
19
changes produced was a distinctively British version of alienation and marginality,

apparent in the British thrillers.19
The complementarity of EastWest discourse shows how the superpowers and the
socialist and capitalist regimes, peering at each other through the Iron Curtain, would
often discover a reflection of themselves, of their own hopes and fears.20
Spy fiction is set exactly against such background. It includes actual mystery and
factual secrecy at the same time. In the period after WWII, espionage fiction became
mainly interested in themes like: the nuclear threat, East-West intelligence operations in
Cold War Germany, Communist proliferation coupled with Stasi-KGB connections, as
well as the various intrigues surrounding the Berlin Wall and its distinctive imprints on
the time. Signing the truce meant they ceased fire, but suspicions remained, atrocities
were not easily forgotten and there was also fear of the emergence of a Fourth Reich, or
of an all-out, world war disaster.
The symbol of the Cold War era that best illustrates the crisis of conscience and
the two opposing philosophies of East and West is the Wall of Berlin (that divided the
city) and its crossing point named Checkpoint Charlie. The barbed wire fence mounted
on a concrete wall was built in 1961 to prevent East Germans from fleeing and to stop an
economical disastrous drain of workers, but at the same time, it split families and cut off
East Berliners employed in the West Berlin from their jobs. The 3.5 million East Germans
who had left by 1961 totalled approximately 20% of the entire East German population.
The emigrants tended to be young and well-educated. The loss was disproportionately
great among professionals: engineers, technicians, physicians, teachers, lawyers and
skilled workers.21
Another important aspect of the time is the womens position in Cold War
societies and literary cultures. A number of critics have argued that the twentieth-century
prolongation of male authority was ably assisted by Cold War militarism and power
politics, with what Ken Ruthven calls its phallocentric iconography of science and
bombs. In the USA, for example, there was an extensive domestic revival in the late
19
Lee Horlsey, The Noir Thriller (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2001 ) 100.
20
Andrew Hammond, Cold War Literature Writing the Global Conflict 6.
21
Berlin Wall, Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Berlin_Wall>
20
1940s and 1950s, with womens return to homemaking and housework being discursively
linked at a time of communist infiltration, nuclear contamination and civil defence
planning with the act of securing the family from the outside world, a containment
that fused womens domestic role to the larger national purpose. In Eastern Europe, as
another instance, state socialism allowed little space for the individual womans rights,
and, although a high percentage of women participated in the paid work force, their
labour was largely within traditional female fields (education, fabric factories or holding
clerical positions in offices), lacking economic equality with men.22
It has even been suggested that the literary engagement with Cold War history is
predominantly male. Paul Brianss discovery that, of the thousand or so fictional
responses to nuclear war written in the English language, only five per cent are by female
novelists, might appear to indicate an overwhelmingly androcentric discourse.
Nevertheless, as Brians goes on to mention, women were crucial to oppositional groups
and cultures throughout the world, leading the anti-nuclear protests in the West from the
1950s onwards, fighting in liberation movements throughout the Third World, and
producing a dynamic, often thematically distinct, literature of resistance.
In an era of growing state control, it is also little wonder that this literature
became obsessed with the technologies of power and communication instruments quite
evolved for their time. There are mentions of IBM machines (early forms of word
processors), tape recorder, video projector, teleprinter, secret messages or signals passed
on by radio music and TV reports and so on. (In Deightons Funeral in Berlin, Vulkan
suggests Harry to play on a certain date and time a specific, famous song on BBC radio,
as a confirmation that London accepted to pay the sum requested by the former for
delivering Semitsa.)
Another example, Ian Fleming in From Russia with Love describes the SMERSH
Department as having sound-proof door, using High Frequency line for the phone with
Heads of other Ministries of State, the Conference Room has a tape recorder for the
minutes of the meeting that can be switched on from the desk, the microphone for the
recorder stretches under the whole area of the conference table and its leads are concealed
in the legs of the table. During the conference, no notes are taken and decisions are
22
21
passed back to departments verbally, for fear of information leaking. Next to the office,
there is a projection room for showing secret films.
In works of fiction seemingly entertaining, the message is conveyed and
documented as in a journalistic endeavour, recording the latest news, real life details of
the common European and political personalities marking exactly the years from 1950 to
1965. The things described by the three mentioned authors are very new; it is history in
the making.
For example, general Stoks lighter in Funeral to Berlin is in the form of
Sputnik23.
As a motto to Funeral in Berlin, there is an interesting quotation from the news
reports in September 1959, citing a dialogue between Allen W. Dulles (then director CIA)
and Khrushchev (Russian president from 1953 to 1964):
Dulles: You, Mr. Chairman, may have seen some of my intelligence reports from
time to time?
Khrushchev: I believe we get the same reports and probably from the same
people?
Dulles: Maybe we should pool our efforts?
Khruschev: Yes. We should buy our intelligence data together and save money.
Wed have to pay the people only once?
No wonder at some point Vulkan complains about the money he receives form the
British Service and says he is in no exclusive service. From that point on he stands to lose
because neither party wants to openly cooperate with him any more, since his own drive
is money. As Dawlish points out in the beginning: When men become double agents, its
just a matter of time before they lose their grip on reality.
Another motto24 of the same book quotes from Albert Einstein, prominent
scientist of the 20th century and Nobel prize winner in Physics (German-born of Jewish
origin), who in 1954, a year before his death mentioned one great mistake in his life,
when he signed the letter to US president Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be
In August 1957, the Soviets successfully launched the worlds first intercontinental ballistic
missile (ICBM) and in October, launched the first Earth satellite, Sputnik. The launch of Sputnik
inaugurated the Space Race
24
If I am right, the Germans will say I was a German and the French will say I was a Jew; if I am
wrong, the Germans will say I was a Jew and the French will say I was a German.
23
22
made; but there was some justification the danger that the Germans would make
them. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein). Len Deighton seems to have cited
from that fragment, probably as a hint parallel to Vulkans ethnic and national dilemma
and to Semitsas need to defect to the West, given his endangered career and uncertain
status as genius scientist in the Genetics Molecular Biology Department at the Moscow
Academy of Sciences.
In one of the appendixes, Deighton notes that in the late thirties a German
scientist discovered a group of organic phosphorus insecticides from which two
poisonous drugs were developed. Further on the research was classified, after observing
the lethal effects they had on concentration-camp prisoners. This evidence was captured
by the Allies during the war and seeing the potential value of nerve gas as a weapon, UK,
the Soviet Union and USA started researches of their own about such poisons and
insecticide compounds.
Hence, there are many subtle allegories, in names, occupations, references to
weeds and insecticides throughout the novel.
The comparison of an ordered garden to a cemetery actually explains that Dawlish
prefers weeds as found in country lanes and grows them, for their rebellious nature, and
also since they attract butterflies. This could very well refer to selecting specially
qualified men for their minds to train as intelligence agents or contacts.
Another hint to the fact that life in the office is boring and the red-tape profession
is plain appears in the presence of a spiky pot plant of a mother-in-laws tongue in
Harrys office that needs attention. The secretary looks after it and it seem to enjoy the
shade of a dossier cupboard.
This same analogy of agents and villains to weeds appears also in The Spy Who
Came in From the Cold in connection to the fact that Mundt was a good operator, but
started shooting people they caught, before they could be interrogated. Ina profession
were questions are more important than the shooting, as Fielder explains to Leamas: He
said there was a law that thistles must be cut down before they flower.
The profession of official spying being first and foremost a practice of play-acting
exposes the agent to certain psychological dangers, when his performance overlaps his
existence and he has no relief from his role. Even when he was alone, Leamas compelled
23
himself to live with the personality he had assumed, because the qualities or lack of them
he pretends to exhibit, are extensions of features he actually possessed.
By late 1960s, the battle for mens mind mentioned by Kennedy in 1961,
(quoted from Wikipedia), between two systems of social organization was largely over;
with tensions henceforth based primarily on clashing geopolitical objectives rather than
ideology.
The literary current that emerged in the Cold War era was postmodernism, marked
by narrative instability, ontological uncertainty, scathing self-reflexivity and a suspicion
of all forms of metanarrative and historiography.25
25
24
Chapter III
The british masters of espionage novels:
1. Ian Fleming
Contribution Ian Fleming is best known for his James Bond series of spy
novels.The main character of the series is James Bond, a thirtyish special agent in Great
Britain's secret service, one of the few with a double-zero prefix (007) on his
identification number, which gives him permission to kill in the field,at his discresion in
order to complete his mission.A knight-errant of the Nord Atlantic alliance, he brings his
adversaries
to
bay
through
superior
endurance,
bravery,
resourcefulness,and
extraordinary good luck.The main protagonist reveceives his assignments from M,

Admiral Sir Miles Messervy, Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St.
George, the head of the secret service.Bond's boss and father figure, M, is a cold fish
with grey, uncompromising eyes who sends his agents on dangerous missions without
showing much concern, or, in case of mishap, remorse.Nevertheless, Bond finds him
lovable.
Through a masterful suspension of disbelief, Ian Fleming fashioned the exploits
of his flashy and conspicuous hero in the mould of earlier fictional adventurers such as
Baron Mnchhausen, and Phileas Fogg. Unlike these predecessors, however, James Bond
is not free-lance. He is a civil servant and does what he does for a living. In performing
his duties for the British government, he also acts as a protector of the free world.
Flemings creation has gained an international gallery of fans, from John F. Kennedy and
Allen Dulles to Prince Philip and, more important, among the majority of the common
people who have bought his books in the multimillions, making James Bond (with much
interest generated by the film adaptations) the greatest and most popular fantasy figure of
25
modern times. Fleming attributed his stunning success to the lack of heroes in real life.
Well, I dont regard James Bond precisely as a hero, he added, but at least he does get
on and do his duty, in an extremely corny way, and in the end, after giant despair, he wins
the girl or the jackpot or whatever it may be.
Analysis Ian Fleming refused to take his work seriously and had few pretensions
about its literary merit, although he was always thoroughly professional in his approach
to writing suspense and fast-paced action. He claimed that his sort of fiction reflected his
own adolescent character: But theyre fun. I think people like them because theyre
fun.
Critics, however, seldom take authors at their own word. Ernest Hemingway,
countering those who were searching for hidden meanings in his The Old Man and the
Sea (1952), snapped, If you want a message, go to Western Union.26
Similarly, Fleming had to protest against those who insisted that his works were
more than entertainment. My books have no social significance, except a deleterious
one; theyre considered to have too much violence and too much sex. But all history has
that. This disclaimer has not prevented critics from analyzing the Bond books in terms
of Freudian psychology, or as a reflection of the decline of Western society, or as a
working out of the phallic code, or even as an expression of an intent to destroy the
modern gods of our society which are actually the expressions of the demonic in
contemporary disguise. Reviewers have split into two general camps: those who refuse
to take the stories seriously and those who do. One of Flemings greatest admirers, the
writer Kingsley Amis, remarked that the strength of Flemings work lies in its command
of pace and its profound latent romanticism.27
Fleming - as he would have been first to admit - does not rank with the major
writers of his age, but he wrote well and with great individuality, and he especially knew
how to set a scene with style, insisting on details of finesse, such as elegant style of
decorations with chandelier, carpets and furniture of the turn of the century, or the
Fiona Kelleghan, 100 Masters of Mystery and Detective Fiction, Magills Choice, Volume I and
II, (Salem Press, 2001) 242.
27
II, 243.
26
26
presentation of the laid-out meals in hotels, and the romantic balcony or terrace
overlooking Bosphorus for instance, displaying a wonderful full moon.
By the third novel of the series, his main character had achieved his definitive
persona - that of the suave, dashing, indestructible, not-so-inconspicuous secret agent the quintessential knight in shining armour of the Western powers. Fleming originally had
intended him to be otherwise.
When I wrote the first one [Casino Royale] in 1953, Fleming related, I wanted
Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened; I wanted him
to be the blunt instrument. Fleming explained that the name of his character was taken
from the name of the author of Birds of the West Indies, and that he had chosen it because
it struck him as the dullest name he had ever heard. Now the dullest name in the world
has become an exciting one. Indeed, fictional heroes can develop a life of their own and
grow in importance and become transformed in the act of creation. Their exploits can also
evolve, becoming as in Bonds case, more fanciful and increasingly wild and
extravagant.28
In Casino Royale, Le Chiffre wants to recoup his losses at the gaming table to pay
back the money he has stolen from the Soviet secret service. Bond beats him at baccarat
and Le Chiffre is ruined. In Moonraker, however, Hugo Draxs ambition is to destroy the
city of London with an atomic missile. In Goldfinger, the title character wants to steal all
the gold from Fort Knox. Emilio Largo in Thunderball is involved with hijacking nuclear
bombs and threatening to destroy British and American cities if Washington and London
do not pay an appropriate ransom. In On Her Majestys Secret Service, Blofeld wants to
infect Great Britain with a virus to wipe out its crops and livestock.
Part of the allure of such a series is having a well-described, grotesque, morally
reprehensible villain - and Fleming does not disappoint. Some of his villains are selfemployed, but most of them are members of villainous organizations: either SMERSH, a
Soviet terror organization, or SPECTER, a private international criminal consortium.
Fleming knew the advantages of reworking basic themes and formulas, the most
fundamental being a dramatization of the struggle between good and evil. He makes
28
II, 244.
27
Bond the agent of divine retribution, who, like his ancient Greek counterparts, exhibits
certain character flaws to emphasize his humanity. The villains also possess certain
classical vices, mostly self-pride, which predictably contributes to their downfall.
The books follow a common organizational pattern by being divided into two
sections. In the first, there is the identification of the villain and the discovery of his evil
scheme. Next, the protagonist plots and carries out a strategy to bring the wrongdoer to
destruction. The book ends with the restoration of an equilibrium - to exist, presumably,
until the next adventure. In fact, this very predictability compensates for Flemings
frequently weak plotting. The reader is comfortable in his knowledge that Bond will duel
with his adversaries over secret codes or weapons, women, money, pride, and finally over
life itself, and that Bond will humiliate them on all these levels. He will expose them for
not being gentlemen, outwit them, and uncover their essential boorishness. The villains
cheat, but Bond outcheats them - exactly what an honest man should do in a dishonest
situation.
All this standard competition paves the way for the ultimate, life-or-death
showdown. Bond must now rely on his own bravery and on his intellectual and physical
strength. In this supreme trial he must successfully withstand the test of courage and pain.
In From Russia with Love, during the final confrontation with Grant in the train holding
him at gunpoint, Bond has to carefully wait for the right moment to challenge his
opponent. Basically the surprise factor helps him as their enter the tunnel to fake falling
as he was shot and then playing dead reaches for the blade in his luggage and manages to
attack a vital point in Grants leg (the femoral artery) to make sure he can kill him
instead. Bonds test, however, is never over; he must prove himself in one assignment
after another.
Bonds rewards come from playing the game. Certainly the monetary rewards are
not great. Bond is not particularly wealthy, nor does he seek great wealth, but enjoys a
comfortable standard of living. He cares little about accumulating much money for his
retirement; he does not think about such mundane things. Bond is a dedicated
workaholic. His identity with his job is so complete that he hates to take vacations. If he
does not have anything official to do, he soon becomes restless and disoriented. In short,
he is a rather humourless man of few inner resources, possessing a great disdain for life
28
that comes too easy. This attitude includes a great disgust for the welfare state, a system
which, he believes, has made Great Britain sluggish and flabby. The expensive pleasures
that he enjoys - fine wines, gourmet foods, and posh hotel rooms - come almost entirely
as perks in the line of duty, as, indeed, does his association with women.
Part of the mass appeal of the Bond fantasy series comes from the heros sexual
prowess. Bond beds women but only once does he marry. (His bride, Tracy, in On Her
Majestys Secret Service, is killed shortly after the wedding.) Thus, he appears to be a
veritable Don Juan. In fact, on an episode-by-episode basis, his conquests are modest one, not more than two - virtual monogamy. What he misses in quantity, however, he
makes up in quality. Bonds women are the stuff of which modern dreams are made. They
are energetic, active, athletic, resourceful, fantastically beautiful and submissive. They
can be traditionally passive, but they are perfectly capable of initiating sex. All are
longing to be dominated by a man.
His superiors, specifically M, give his life the fundamental sense of purpose that
he in turn must give to his female companions. Women are the means through which he
can compensate for his loss of control to the British establishment. Bond responds well,
however, to such direction, coming from a society which dotes on hierarchies and makes
a virtue of everyone knowing his or her place. Fleming also manages to pour into his
character the nostalgia that he must have felt for the heyday of the British Empire. His
works evoke the Rupert-Brookian vision of England as the land where men with
splendid hearts must go.29
From Russia with Love

From Russia, with Love is the fifth novel in Ian Flemings James Bond series, first
published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on 8 April 1957. As with the first four books,
From Russia, with Love was generally well received by the critics. After the release,
Fleming stated that in many respects it is his best book. The story was written at
Flemings Goldeneye estate in Jamaica in early 1956.
29
II, 245.
29
The story centres on a plot by SMERSH, the Soviet counterintelligence agency, to

assassinate Bond in such a way as to discredit both him and his organisation, the Secret
Service. As bait for the plot, the Russians use a beautiful cipher clerk and the Spektor, a
Soviet decoding machine. Much of the action takes place in Istanbul and on the Orient
Express.
The expository first chapters of the book are described entirely from the Soviet
point of view, and a large part of the book passes before Bond himself appears onstage.
SMERSH, the Soviet counterintelligence agency, plans to commit a grand act of
terrorism in the intelligence field. For this, it targets British secret service agent James
Bond, who has lately overturned their operations and killed some of their best men.
Therefore Bond has been listed as an enemy of the Soviet state and a death warrant has
been issued for him. His death is planned to precipitate a major sex scandal, which will
run through the world press for months and leave his and his services reputation in
tatters. Bonds killer is to be SMERSH executioner Red Grant, a psychopath whose
homicidal urges coincide with the full moon. Kronsteen, SMERSH's chess-playing
master planner, and Colonel Rosa Klebb, head of Operations and Executions, devise the
operation. They persuade an attractive young cipher clerk, Corporal Tatiana Romanova,
to falsely defect from her post in Istanbul, claiming to have fallen in love with Bond after
seeing his file photograph. As an added incentive, Tatiana will provide the British with a
Spektor, a Russian decoding device much coveted by MI6. She is not told the details of
the plan.
An offer of the Spektor is subsequently received by MI6 in London, ostensibly
from Romanova, and contains the condition that Bond collects her and the machine in
Istanbul. MI6 is unsure of Romanova's story, but the prize of the Spektor is too tempting
to ignore and Bonds superior, M, orders him to go to Turkey and meet her. Bond meets
and quickly forms a comradeship with Darko Kerim, head of the British services station
in Turkey. Kerim takes Bond to a meal with some gypsies (that informed Kerim of
smugglers), in which Bond witnesses a brutal fight between two young girls, interrupted
by an attack by Soviet agents. In retaliation, Bond helps Kerim assassinate their attackers,
including a top Bulgarian bandit.
30
Bond duly encounters Romanova and the two plan their route out of Turkey with
the Spektor. He and Kerim believe her story and in due course she, Bond and Kerim
board the Orient Express with the Spektor. Bond and Kerim quickly discover three MGB
agents on board travelling incognito. Kerim uses bribes and trickery to have the two
taken off the train, but he is later found dead in his compartment together with the dead
body of the third agent. At Trieste supposedly a fellow MI6 agent, Captain Nash
(Grants invented identity), arrives on the train and Bond presumes he has been sent by M
as added protection for the rest of the trip, moreover since approached in the corridors
train, he replies to Bond with the code recognition between agents that was changed on
the first day of each month. Tatiana is suspicious of Nash (in Russian, Nash meaning
ours), but Bond reassures her that Nash is from his own service. After dinner, at which
Nash has drugged Romanova, Bond wakes up to find a gun pointing at him and Nash
reveals himself to be the killer, Grant. Instead of killing Bond immediately, Grant reveals
SMERSHs plan, including the detail that he is to shoot Bond through the heart and that
the Spektor is booby-trapped to explode when examined. As Grant talks, Bond slips his
metal cigarette case between the pages of a magazine he is holding in front of him and
positions it in front of his heart to stop the bullet. After Grant fires, Bond pretends to be
mortally wounded and when Grant steps over him, Bond attacks him: Grant is killed,
whilst Bond and Romanova subsequently escape.
Later, in Paris, after successfully delivering Tatiana and the Spektor to his
superiors, Bond encounters Rosa Klebb. She is captured but manages to kick Bond with a
poisoned blade concealed in the tip of her shoe; the story ends with Bond fighting for
breath and falling to the floor (at the time Fleming intended to end the series with Bonds
death).
One of the background aspects of the novel was also a central theme: the Cold
War. From Russia, with Love was written and published at a time when tensions between
East and West were on the rise and public awareness was high. 1956 saw both the public
exposure of an Anglo-American tunnel into East Berlin to intercept Soviet
communications, and a popular uprising in Hungary brutally repressed by Soviet forces.
Flemming demonstrated an extremely anti Soviet position in the novel,Bond's enemy in
From Russia, With Love was soviet power.
31
The concept of the loss of British power and influence is also present in the novel. With
the British Empire in decline, in From Russia, with Love, this manifested itself in Bonds
conversations with Darko Kerim when he admits in England we dont show teeth any
more only gums.
Following on from the character development of Bond in his previous four novels,
Fleming adds further background to Bonds private life in From Russia, with Love,
largely around his home life and personal habits, with Bonds introduction to the story
seeing him at breakfast with his housekeeper, May. He seems to have moments of selfdoubt even and vulnerability, when his flight to Istanbul encounters severe turbulence
from a storm. The other characters in the book are also well developed, with the Head of
Station T, Darko Kerim Bey, one of Flemings more colourful characters and Red Grant
to be a very modern villain: the relentless, remorseless psycho with the cold dead eyes of
a drowned man.
Flemings trip to Istanbul in June 1955 to cover an Interpol conference for The
Sunday Times was a source of much of the background information in the story. In
Istanbul Fleming met the Oxford-educated Nazim Kalkavan, who became the model for
Darko Kerim; Fleming wrote much of Kalkavans conversations into a notebook, which
he then used word for word in the novel. Whilst in Istanbul, Fleming wrote an account of
the Istanbul Pogroms, "The Great Riot of Istanbul", which was published in The Sunday
Times on 11 September 1955.
Other elements of the novel came from people Fleming knew or had heard of: Red
Grant, the name of a Jamaican river guide described as "a cheerful, voluble giant of
villainous aspect", was used for the half-German, half-Irish assassin, while Rosa Klebb
was partly based on Colonel Rybkin of Soviet Intelligence. The Spektor machine used as
the bait for Bond was not a Cold War device, but had its roots in the World War II
Enigma machine, which Fleming had tried to obtain during his time in Naval Intelligence
Division.
Using the Orient Express as a plot device came from two sources: Fleming had
returned from the Istanbul conference in 1955 on the train, but found the experience drab,
partly because there was no restaurant car. Fleming also knew of the story of Eugene
Karp and his journey on the Orient Express: Karp was a US naval attach and
32
intelligence agent based in Budapest who, in February 1950, took the Orient Express
from Budapest to Paris, carrying a number of papers about blown US spy networks in the
Eastern Bloc. Soviet assassins were already on the train. The conductor was drugged and
Karps body was found shortly afterwards in a railway tunnel south of Saltzberg.
The novels sales were aided by an advertising campaign that played upon the
visit of British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden to Fleming's Goldeneye estate and by
the publication of a 1961 Life Magazine article, which listed From Russia, with Love as
one of US President John F. Kennedys ten favourite books. This led to a surge in sales
that made Fleming the biggest-selling crime writer in the US.
There have been four adaptations of the book: a serialisation in the Daily Express
newspaper, a subsequent daily comic strip by Henry Gammidge and John McLusky in the
same paper, the 1963 film version, and a 2012 BBC radio adaptation of the same name,
produced by Jarvis & Ayres and starring Toby Stephens.
The film version was directed by Terence Young and starred Sean Connery as
Bond. It contained some changes to the novel, with the leading villains switching from
SMERSH to SPECTRE, a fictional terrorist organization, and the Spektor decoding
machine named instead the Lektor. On the whole, however, it was a faithful adaptation of
the novel.
2. John Le Carr (penname for David John Moore Cornwell)
Contribution Nearly all of John Le Carr's works are spy fiction, George
Smiley being the main protagonist of most of his novels.Smiley is a master spy and
holder of various official and unofficial posts in Greats Britain's Secret Intelligence
Service (SIS), he is separated from his unfaithful wife. Middle-aged, short, plump, and
bespectacled, the waddling, owlish, Smiley is a most unlikely hero.Vaguely idealistic,he
lives for his work.
John le Carr began writing espionage novels in the early 1960s, when the major
figure in the field was Ian Fleming, creator of the cartoonish, superhuman James Bond.
33
Le Carrs fiction stands in sharp contrast, emphasizing the drudgery, boredom, and
moral ambiguity in the decidedly unglamorous world of the real-life agent, who is more
often a bureaucrat than an adventurer. Although many credit him with inventing the
realistic espionage tale, le Carr denies such an achievement, acknowledging such
predecessors as W. Somerset Maugham with his Ashenden stories. By creating some of
the most believable characters and plausible situations in the genre, le Carr has perhaps
had the most influence on the development of espionage fiction. In addition to being the
best-selling espionage novelist, he has been acclaimed for turning a form of
entertainment into an art form, for finding the poetry in the labyrinthine machinations of
his plots. He has been judged more than a genre writer by many critics, deserving of
inclusion in such serious company as Iris Murdoch and John Fowles. According to
Andrew Rutherford, Le Carr offers exciting, disturbing, therapeutic fantasies of action
and intrigue; but in his best work he also engages with political, moral and psychological
complexities, demonstrating the capacity of entertainment art to transcend its own selfimposed limitations.30
Analysis John le Carrs agents are tired, bitter, and lonely men desperately
trying to hold on to the vestiges of their ideals and illusions, to keep away from the abyss
of cynicism and despair. Alec Leamas, the protagonist of The Spy Who Came in from the
Cold, has been in the field too long but allows himself to be talked into undertaking one
last assignment, only to be deceived by his masters, spiritually destroyed, and killed.
There are no heroes or villains on le Carrs Cold War battlefields: Everyone uses
everyone, and conspiracies lie everywhere, like mines.31
In a 1974 interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, Le Carr said that
his novels differ from most thrillers in which the plot is imposed upon the characters. He
said that he writes the kind of book in which you take one character, you take another
character and you put them into collision, and the collision arrives because they have
different appetites, and you begin to get the essence of drama. When bringing about
these collisions, le Carr is less interested in the events than in how the characters
30
II, 381.
31
II, 382.
34
respond, that is, their moral behaviour. Le Carrs novels reflect his belief that people
barely know themselves, that in human relations we frequently affect attitudes to which
we subscribe perhaps intellectually, but not emotionally. He considers such relations
fraught with a nerve-wracking tension. Such a view of life in which this tension leads
to conspiracies is appropriate for a writer of espionage fiction. The espionage novel,
according to le Carr, becomes a kind of fable about forces we do believe in the West
are stacked against us.32
George Smiley is the perfect le Carr protagonist because of his ability to see
conspiracies of which others are unaware. In Call for the Dead, his suspicions about the
suicide of a Foreign Office clerk lead to unmasking the duplicities of one of his closest
friends. (Betrayal of ones friends is a major le Carr theme.) In A Murder of Quality, a
straightforward mystery, Smiley enters the closed world of the public school - an
institution le Carr finds almost as fascinating and corrupt as the intelligence
establishment - to solve the murder of a schoolmasters wife. After appearing as a minor
character in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Looking-Glass War (1965),
Smiley reaches his fullest development in the trilogy that pits him against his Soviet
opposite number, known as Karla. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974), The Honourable
Schoolboy (1977), and Smileys People (1980), which were published together in 1982 as
The Quest for Karla, show le Carr working on a much larger canvas than before with
dozens of characters serving as the chess pieces that Karla and Smiley deploy all over
Europe and Asia in their deadly battle of wits.
Smiley is forced to accomplish his goals not only without the help of his superiors
but also often despite their interference. In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Control, the
longtime head of the Secret Intelligence Service (always referred to as the Circus, for the
location of its offices in the Cambridge Circus section of London), has died and is
replaced by the unctuous Percy Alleline. Control had suspected that the Soviets had
placed a double agent, or mole, in the higher echelons of the Circus. (Le Carr is credited
with making this use of mole popular.) He had therefore sent Jim Prideaux, one of the
Circuss best agents, to Czechoslovakia to uncover evidence about the moles identity, but
32
II, 383.
35
a trap is laid, resulting in the wounding and torture of Prideaux. After Controls death,
Smiley, with the help of the delightfully colourful Connie Sachs, head of Russian
research, slowly and painstakingly tracks the mole through the records of intelligence
operations. This procedure is hampered by the lack of cooperation from Alleline, whom
the mole cleverly manipulates. Smiley learns more and more about the head of Moscow
Centre, Karla, the man behind the mole, the then-unknown agent Smiley once had in his
grasp. He discovers that the mole is Bill Haydon - the Circuss golden boy, the lover of
Ann Smiley, and the best friend of Jim Prideaux. (Haydon clearly suggests the infamous
double agent Kim Philby; le Carr wrote the introduction to a 1968 study of Philby.)
Before Haydon can be swapped to the Soviets, the shocked, disillusioned Prideaux kills
him. Since Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy centres on the quest for Karlas mole, it more
closely resembles traditional mystery fiction than any of le Carrs other espionage
novels. The Honourable Schoolboy, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and
the Gold Dagger of the Crime Writers Association, focuses on Smileys efforts to restore
the credibility of the Circus. Again with the help of Connie Sachs, he backtracks through
the files to attempt to learn what information Haydon has covered up or destroyed,
discovering that Karla has made large gold payments to a Hong Kong trust account.
Smileys legman, Jerry Westerby, a dissolute, aristocratic journalist, goes to Hong Kong
to help unravel the strands of the multilayered plot. The trust proves to be controlled by
Drake Ko, a Hong Kong millionaire, whose supposedly dead brother, Nelson, is Karlas
double agent in China. Nelson Ko intends to sneak into Hong Kong to be reunited with
Drake, but Saul Enderby, Smileys new boss, has been working behind his back and has
arranged for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to reap the rewards, including details
of Chinas military capabilities. Westerby has fallen for Drakes beautiful English
mistress and attempts to disrupt Nelsons capture and is killed. In Smileys People, the
now-retired Smiley learns that Soviet agents in Paris are attempting to establish a new
identity for a Russian girl. Piecing together bits of seemingly unrelated information, he,
with the assistance of Connie Sachs and other old friends, discovers that Karla has a
disturbed daughter in a Swiss sanatorium. Smiley is his own legman this time as he
travels to Hamburg, Paris, and Berne to ferret out the facts and obtain satisfaction from
his nemesis. By detecting that Karla has illegally used public funds to care for his
36
daughter, Smiley forces the Soviet superspy to defect. As with JerryWesterby, Karlas
downfall results from love, a particularly dangerous emotion throughout le Carrs works,
as Smileys feelings for his adulterous Ann particularly attest.
Le Carrs writing style is primarily simple, with heavy reliance on dialogue. His
descriptive passages usually focus on the actions of his characters and only occasionally
delineate places and things. When presenting a complex idea, personage, or situation,
however, his style can become more ornate, with meandering, parenthetical sentences
resembling those of Henry James and William Faulkner. Le Carr has been criticized for
creating excessively intertwined, difficult-to-follow plots. While this charge has some
validity, he is trying to present his stories in the same way his characters see them: as
fragments of a puzzle, the outline of which will be clear once its components finally
begin to connect. The reader trusts le Carr as a guide through this moral maze, since his
close attention to detail indicates that he truly knows the details of espionage. Like
Graham Greene (who called The Spy Who Came in from the Cold the best espionage
story he had ever read), le Carr is a moralist who uses the conventions of espionage to
convey his views of society. His is a devious world in which the best intentions have little
effect. In 1966, le Carr wrote, There is no victory and no virtue in the Cold War, only a
condition of human illness and a political misery.33 The Cold War espionage in his
novels is a morally ambiguous undertaking full of fear, deceit, betrayal, and
disillusionment. The unmasking of Haydon destroys Prideauxs illusions about
friendship, loyalty, and love. (Le Carr has said that he cannot believe in constancy,
group values, [or] obligations.)
Le Carrs spies are generally weak, decent men manipulated by cynical
bureaucrats who rarely take any risks. These spies are uncertain whether the values they
defend are more endangered by the enemy or by their employers. Those in power see
their work as a form of gamesmanship, with these particular games played to create the
impression that Great Britain remains a world power, while the realities only underscore
the decay of the lost Empire, especially in the Hong Kong scenes of The Honourable
Schoolboy and the ironic first names of the Ko brothers.
33
II, 385.
37
Distrust of institutions and those who run them appears throughout le Carrs
fiction. In an interview with the French monthly Lire, he admits: I probably took refuge
in the world of espionage to escape my father To understand, explain and justify my
fathers betrayal of his milieu, class and society, one has to blame the institutions and the
men behind them as well as the respectability in which I found temporary refuge when I
fled.34 He sees the institutions taking on lives of their own contrary to their creators
intentions. This lack of control is clearly evident in Great Britain, where the social system
produces an administrative elite, personified by Saul Enderby, who can be affable and
charming while remaining morally sterile. When someone such as Westerby attempts to
make a stand as an individual, he is destroyed.
Le Carr considers Western institutions arrogant for attempting to transform the
rest of the world according to their image. As Westerby, with his suggestive name, travels
through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam in 1975, he witnesses the decadence and
degradation brought on by the failure of the West to understand the East.
The Karla trilogy is crammed with allusions to the myth of the Holy Grail: The
Soviet disinformation in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy comes from an imaginary agent
known as Source Merlin. Smiley is both a Percival pursuing the Grail - Ann refers to her
husbands obsession with Karla as the black Grail - and an aged King Arthur
attempting to restore harmony in his land. The Circus is in disarray because the members
of the inner circle, abetted by Haydons treachery, have, like the Knights of the Round
Table, broken their vows of loyalty and obedience. Le Carr evokes this myth to
emphasize the loss of ideals in an England where everything is shrouded in ambiguity.
Le Carr has said that each of his novels begins with the image of a character, and
his skill at creating enthralling protagonists and scores of believable secondary characters
is perhaps the greatest strength of his stories. He juggles his Whitehall officials, police,
journalists, schoolmasters, CIA agents, prostitutes, and drug smugglers with the finesse of
Charles Dickens.35
34
II, 385.
35
II, 386.
38
Le Carrs most remarkable achievement with George Smiley is that, over seven
novels and twenty years, he grows into an almost mythic figure while remaining all too
human. Clumsy, meek, and short-sighted, he is both extremely specific and quite
enigmatic. Peter Guillam, his protg, assistant, and most devoted supporter, never truly
understands him. His name is doubly ironic since Smiley wears an emotionless mask, and
George is the name of Englands dragon-slaying patron saint and of the kings who were
heads of state during the two world wars. Westerby is surprised to learn that such a
seemingly ordinary man served three years undercover in Germany during World War II.
Like his creator, Smiley interprets all of life in terms of conspiracy. He keeps a
photograph of Karla in his office to remind him that at least one conspiracy has a human
face. Since spying should be an impersonal business, his superiors reprimand him for
always saying Karla when he means Moscow Centre. They also believe that he
wastes time on insignificant matters when he should delegate responsibility to his
subordinates. Nevertheless, his need for control compels him to involve himself in all
aspects of an operation.
Smiley has enough self-knowledge to realize that because he is obsessed by his
work he cannot blame Ann for her infidelity. He is also possessed by self-doubt,
wondering whether Ann was right and his striving had become nothing other than a
private journey among the beasts and villains of his own insufficiency.36
Le Carr ensures some distance between the reader and Smiley by having reliable
characters question his actions. Westerby is perturbed by the failed priest side of
Smiley, who seems to assume that the whole blasted Western world shared his worries
and had to be talked round to a proper way of thinking. In a 1985 speech at The Johns
Hopkins University, le Carr criticized his creation for being the kind of man who would
sacrifice his own morality on the altar of national necessity. Westerby is finally a more
admirable character for daring, however hopelessly, to assert the dignity of the individual
over that of the institution. At the end of Smileys People, Peter Guillam tells Smiley that
he has won, but his superior is not so certain. What exactly has been won, and at what
36
II, 386.
39
cost? If, in le Carrs ambiguous world, there are no heroes or villains, neither can there
be any victories.
In addition to the renowned Smiley, le Carr created a host of other memorable
characters. In the third and fourth decades of his writing career came Charlie, his first
female protagonist, in The Little Drummer Girl (1983), who is initiated into the violent
and illusory world of espionage; Magnus Pym of A Perfect Spy (1986) who suffers the
humiliation of his fathers betrayals, only to turn his own duplicitous behaviour into art
form; Jonathan Pine from The Night Manager (1993), who was as close as le Carr ever
came to a James Bond-type superspy; and Nat Brock of Single and Single (1999), whom
many likened to a stylish and modernized George Smiley.
As le Carrs literary dominance entered its fifth decade, it remained important to
note that his tales of espionage have also been adapted to film. Worthy of note are The
Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965, starring Richard Burton) and The Russia House
(1990, starring Sean Connery) and television versions of A Perfect Spy from Masterpiece
Theatre and the extraordinary BBC miniseries of Tinker, Tailor, Sailor, Spy, which starred
Alec Guinness as George Smiley. Though le Carr characterized Guinnesss performance
as brilliant, it nevertheless had a negative impact on the author; he had imagined his
most famous creation rather differently. Yet Guinness so inhabited the role and had so
firmly imprinted his image in le Carrs mind that the author chose to abandon Smiley in
favour of newer protagonists, such as Charlie, Magnus, Ned Palfrey (who was prominent
in both The Russia House and The Secret Pilgrim), Jonathan, and finally Nat, who
appeared ready to carry on where Smiley left off.37
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold occurs during the heightened-alert politicomilitary tensions that characterised the late 1950s and early 1960s of the Cold War, when
a Warsaw PactNATO war in Europe (Germany) seemed likely. The story begins and
37
II, 387.
40
concludes in East Germany, about a year after the completion of the Berlin Wall and
around the time when double-agent Heinz Felfe was exposed and tried.
In Call for the Dead, le Carr's debut novel, a key character is Hans-Dieter
Mundt, an assassin of the Abteilung (the Department), the East German Secret Service,
who is working under diplomatic cover in London. When uncovered by agents George
Smiley and Peter Guillam of MI6, referred to as the Circus and led by Control, he
escapes from England to East Germany before Smiley and Guillam can catch him. Two
years later, at the time of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Mundt has risen from the
field to the upper-echelon of the Abteilung, because of his successful counter-intelligence
operations against the spy networks of the British Secret Service.
The West Berlin office of the British Secret Intelligence Service under the
command of Station Head Alec Leamas, has been performing poorly. At the
commencement of the novel, Karl Riemeck, Leamass last and best double agent, a highranking East German political officer, is shot dead whilst defecting to West Berlin.
With no operatives left, Leamas is recalled to London by Control, the chief of the
Circus. He asks Leamas to stay in the cold for one last mission: to fake the defection of
a senior East German operative named Mundt, and then to expose him as a British double
agent. Fiedler, one of Mundts subordinates - who suspects that Mundt is already a double
agent - is targeted as a potentially useful adjunct. George Smiley and his former assistant,
Peter Guillam, brief Leamas for his mission.
To bring Leamas to the East Germans attention as a potential defector, the Circus
sacks him, leaving him with only a small pension. He takes and loses a miserable job in a
run-down library. There, he meets Liz Gold, a young Jewish woman, who is the secretary
of her local cell of the Communist Party of Great Britain. They become lovers. Before
taking the final plunge into Controls scheme, Leamas makes Liz promise not to look
for him, no matter what she hears. He asks Control to leave Liz alone, and Control
agrees. Leamas then initiates the mission by assaulting a local grocer in order to get
himself arrested.
After his release from jail three months later, he is approached by an East German
recruiter. He is taken abroad, first to the Netherlands, then to East Germany, en route
meeting progressively higher echelons of the Abteilung, the East German intelligence
41
service. During his debriefing he drops casual hints about British payments within the
Rolling Stone operation via banks in Denmark and Finland to a double agent in the
Abteilung. Meanwhile, Smiley and Guillam appear at Lizs apartment in London,
claiming to be friends of Leamas. They question her about him, and offer financial help.
In East Germany, Leamas meets Fiedler. The two men engage in extended
ideological and philosophical discussions, contrasting Leamass pragmatism with
Fiedler's idealistic outlook. Leamas observes that the young, brilliant Fiedler - a Jew who
spent the Second World War in Canada - is concerned about the morality of his actions,
and believes that what he is doing is right. Mundt, on the other hand, is a brutal,
opportunistic mercenary, an ex-Nazi who joined the Communists after the war out of
expediency, and remains to the end an anti-Semite. Leamas concludes that helping
Fiedler destroy Mundt is a worthy act. Meanwhile, Liz is invited to East Germany for a
Communist Party information exchange.
The power struggle within the Abteilung is exposed when Mundt orders Fiedler
and Leamas arrested and tortured. The leaders of the East German regime intervene after
learning that Fiedler applied for an arrest warrant for Mundt on the same day that Mundt
arrested Fiedler and Leamas. Fiedler and Mundt are released, then summoned to present
their cases to a military tribunal of the Party, in the town of Grlitz.
At the trial, Leamas documents a series of secret bank account payments that
Fiedler has matched to the movements of Mundt abroad. Fiedler also shows that Riemeck
passed to Leamas information to which he had no formal access, but to which Mundt did.
Fiedler presents other evidence implicating Mundt as a British double agent, and explains
that Mundt was captured in England and allowed to escape only after agreeing to work as
a double agent for the British.
Mundts attorney calls the unsuspecting Liz as a surprise witness. She admits that
Smiley paid her apartment lease after visiting her, and that she had promised Leamas to
not look for him when he disappeared. She also admits that he had said good-bye to her
the night before he assaulted the grocer. Realizing that their cover is now blown, Leamas
offers to tell all in exchange for Lizs freedom. He admits that Control gave him the
mission to frame Mundt as a double agent, but adds that Fiedler was not a participant.
During cross-examination, Fiedler asks Mundt how he knew that someone had paid off
42
Lizs lease - because Liz never would have spoken about it. Mundt hesitates before
answering a second too long, Leamas thought - that she had increased her Party
contribution. When the Tribunal halts the trial and arrests Fiedler, Leamas finally
understands the true nature of Control and Smileys scheme and that he in turn has
become expendable.
Liz is confined to a jail cell, but Mundt releases her, and puts her in a car that will
take her to freedom; Leamas is at the wheel. During their drive to Berlin, where an escape
route awaits, Leamas explains everything: The fake bank account payments were real;
Mundt is, in fact, a double agent reporting to Smiley and Guillam. The target of Leamass
mission was Fiedler, not Mundt, because Fiedler was close to exposing Mundt as a
double agent. Leamas and Liz unwittingly provided Mundt with the means of discrediting
Leamas, and in turn, Fiedler. Their intimate relationship facilitated the plan. Liz realizes
to her horror that as a result of their actions, the Circus has succeeded in protecting its
asset, the despicable Mundt, at the expense of the thoughtful and idealistic Fiedler. Liz
asks what will become of Fiedler; Leamas replies that he will most likely be executed.
Lizs love for Leamas overcomes her moral disgust, and she accompanies Leamas
to a break in the wire fronting the Berlin Wall, from which they can climb the wall and
escape to West Berlin. Leamas climbs to the top of the wall; as he reaches down to help
Liz, they are caught in the spotlights of the East German border guards. Liz is shot. Her
fingers slip from his grasp and she falls. From the Western side of the Wall, Leamas hears
Western agents, including Smiley, shouting: Jump, Alec! Jump, man! He stares at Lizs
lifeless form, then climbs back down the Eastern side of the wall, where he too is shot
and killed.
At its publication in 1963, during the Cold War, the moral presentation of The Spy
Who Came in from the Cold rendered it a revolutionary espionage novel by showing the
intelligence services of both the Eastern and Western nations as engaging in the same
expedient amorality in the name of national security. John le Carr also presented his
western spy as a morally burnt-out case.
The espionage world of Alec Leamas portrays love as a three-dimensional,
problematic, emotion that can have disastrous consequences to those involved. Moreover,
good does not always vanquish evil in Leamass world. In the 1960s, some reviewers
43
criticised Alec Leamass resultant defeatism; The Times said the hero must triumph over
his enemies, as surely as Jack must kill the giant in the nursery tale. If the giant kills Jack,
we have missed the whole point of the story.
In her essay Is Common Human Decency a Scarce Commodity in Popular
Literature?, Margaret Compton contrasts the ending of The Spy Who Came in from the
Cold with the ending of Call for the Dead: Le Carrs dbut book ends with Smiley
feeling deeply guilty about having killed Dieter Frey, the idealistic East German spy who
had been Smileys agent and friend during the Second World War. Leamas and Liz, in
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold both make a diametrically opposite moral choice in
that each values their personal relationship over any political loyalty.38
Time magazine, while including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in its top
100 novels list, stated the novel was a sad, sympathetic portrait of a man who has lived
by lies and subterfuge for so long, hes forgotten how to tell the truth.
Le Carrs book won a 1963 Gold Dagger award from the Crime Writers
Association for "Best Crime Novel". Two years later the US edition was awarded the
Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for "Best Mystery Novel". It was the
first work to win the award for "Best Novel" from both mystery writing organisations.
In 1965, a film adaptation was made by screenwriters Paul Dehn and Guy Trosper,
who received an Edgar the following year for "Best Motion Picture Screenplay" for an
American movie.The picture was directed by Martin Ritt with Richard Burton starring as
Leamas and Claire Bloom as Liz Gold ( in the film, the name was changed to Nan
Perry).Even half a century after it was made, the movie still manages to move the
audience, with its depiction of a career in espionage as damaging and inhuman, every
character involved is exploited, corrupted or treacherous.
In 2005, the fiftieth anniversary of the Dagger Awards, The Spy Who Came in
from the Cold was awarded the "Dagger of Daggers," a one-time award given to the
Golden Dagger winner regarded as the stand-out among all fifty winners over the history
of the Crime Writers Association. The novel was selected as one of the All-Time 100
Novels by TIME Magazine.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spy_Who_Came_in_from_the_Cold>
38
44
3. Len Deighton
Contribution Len Cyril Deighton is most famous for his anonymous spy series
of novels.The main protagonist, the anonymous spy (Harry Palmer in film adaptations) is
an unmarried, working-class, wisecracking field operative in the British Intelligence
Service.A consummate cold warrior with few illusions, he is intent upon foiling the
complicated machinations of Communist agents and of moles within his own service.
Deightons espionage novels, with those of John le Carr, sounded a new and sustained
note in fiction in the 1960s just as the vogue for Ian Flemings James Bond series of spy
fantasies was growing in international scope. Indeed, Deightons anonymous spy plays
himself off against his flashy fictional colleague by referring to Bond by name. Like le
Carr, Deighton depicts the Cold War in highly realistic detail and portrays both the
complex plots and plans necessary to the world of espionage and the circumstances of
everyday life. Among Deightons many gifts is his ability to probe the rivalries and
insecurities of his characters as they move their own front lines forward in the secret war.
Another is his skill in creating engagingly flippant and shrewd, but self deprecatory spies,
who tell their stories in a cool and caustic tone that reminds one of the hard-boiled
detectives.
Analysis Len Deighton achieved instant popular success with The Ipcress File,
begun while he was on holiday in France, and followed it between 1963 and 1967 with
four more crisp, tightly constructed novels which established him as one of the foremost
writers in the espionage genre. Deighton uses footnotes and appendices in these early
novels to strengthen his stories with information about real-life espionage agencies,
technical terminology and jargon, and historical events. These anchors to the reality
beyond his fiction serve to heighten authenticity. References to then current events,
popular songs, living political figures, characters in popular fiction (such as James Bond),
and brands of cigarettes, food, drinks, alcoholic beverages, cars that to this day are
famous and marks of top quality (like Camel, Nescaf, Darjeeling tea, Martini, Teachers,
45
Cadillac, Jaguar etc) add to the sense of reality in the novels, but also date them. The
topicality that helped Deighton gain instant mass appeal in the 1960s eventually became a
liability, for many of his references are inaccessible to later readers; for example the
references to the Beatnik movement (Sam is a fan and has many friends in the pubs she
visits), with their distinct fashion style and artistic circles meeting up in coffee shops to
discuss poetry and philosophy).
Most remarkable is Deightons ability to create spy protagonists, in the cases of
both the anonymous spy and Bernard Samson, who are hard-bitten but nevertheless
engaging. They are drawn from lower-class or middle-class backgrounds to compete
alongside and often against the aristocrats who control the ministries and departments of
Great Britains government. Frequently they are called upon to expose members of the
Oxbridge set, who were schooled at the ancient universities at Oxford and Cambridge, as
venal
and
self-serving
betrayers
of
England
or
ideologically
motivated
counterintelligence penetrants of English security forces. In pitting the ordinary field

agent or senior staff member risen from the ranks against those born of privilege,
Deighton emphasizes the value of talent over inheritance, of dogged hard work over
easily gained postings, and of resourcefulness, stamina, and deviousness over
deviousness alone. In many respects, Harry Palmer and Bernard Samson share a deeply
felt conviction about the importance of their work. Each of the novels contains some
speculation about the meaning of individual effort in the context of political action. These
speculations are most frequently personal, bittersweet comments on the realities of
working with diminished ideals. Deightons protagonists are quite clear about the motive
for espionage: Spying is not the Great Game Rudyard Kipling described; it is a war
fought against oppression yet making use of the tools and tactics of oppressive
government.
Deightons usual narrative technique combines first-person observation,
realistically reconstructed conversations, and intricately plotted sequences of events. He
is at his best when his characters tell their own stories, although the interspersal of thirdperson narrative in Funeral in Berlin (1964), for example, is also effective. The reader is
taken into the confidence of the narrator, who shares his own version of events, his
assessment of others motivations, and his attitudes and observations concerning a variety
46
of subjects. Both Samson and Palmer are keen observers who give a false impression of
being incompetent or obtuse: This is their secret weapon.
Deightons use of dialogue serves to heighten the immediacy of his characters and
to place them in their social and cultural spheres. So, for example, in the American
novels (Spy Story, 1974; Yesterdays Spy, 1975; Catch a Falling Spy, 1976), he captures
the essence of the American military culture through diction and syntax. Similarly, his ear
is finely tuned to the idioms peculiar to German speakers of English (sometimes phrases
appear to be translated directly from the German) and to the varied classes of British
speakers exemplified in characters ranging from Samsons cockney brother-in-law,
George, to the studied Oxbridge manner of Palmers master, Dawlish. Deighton thus
updates George Bernard Shaws acute observations of the English-speaking world in
Pygmalion (1913). Deighton makes his characters individualized and memorable by
giving the reader some entry into their psychological makeup through their speech. Like
many of his contemporaries, Deighton revels in a virtuosity of plot construction. Indeed,
many of the developments in espionage fiction in the 1970s and 1980s owe much to
Deightons pioneer work in developing highly complicated, intricate story lines. Many
conventions of the spy novel have their origins in the works of Deighton and le Carr,
who may rightly be considered the forgers of a new genre of postmodern espionage
fiction characteristic to the era of the Cold War.
In Funeral in Berlin, for example, the action takes strange turns as the real
motivation for an alleged defection and the preparations for it are slowly revealed to have
wholly unexpected sources. Far from being a straightforward narrative recounting an
actual Russian defection to the West, filled with technical material about new
developments in chemical warfare, the novel gradually uncovers a different story
altogether, one that stretches back to the time of the concentration camps of Nazi
Germany, when doctors were willing to forge death certificates to invent others a new
life. At the novels core are long-held secrets of murder and false identities. Many of the
interagency rivalries on both sides of the Iron Curtain complicate plots and counterplots
as agents bend their efforts to outsmart and outflank one another in search of an
enigmatic and, in the end, fictitious defector. The real object of the exercise is only
gradually understood by Palmer, who is as much manipulated as the other intelligence
47
agents until he guesses the intent of his actual adversary, the occasion for the funeral in
the novels title, and the ironic need for some unplanned funerals. The novel culminates
in the strange tale of an end of King Vulkan and of his British co-conspirator, Robin
James Hallam.
In Deightons first novel, The Ipcress File, the twists and turns of plot, false starts,
mistaken motives, and carefully concealed identities are interwoven with the ordinary
concerns of the narrator. The narrator communicates his growing consciousness of the
actual conspiracy at work in the British Intelligence Service directly to the reader, who
experiences a simultaneity of discovery. Having discovered a highly successful formula,
Deighton proceeded to perfect it in his subsequent works. The trilogy comprising Berlin
Game (1983), Mexico Set (1984), and London Match (1985) provides prime examples of
Deightons mature work. It represents his most extensive, sustained study of a character,
one who is, in the course of the trilogy, situated in an extended family, in a circle of
friends (some going back to childhood), and in the worst possible espionage dilemma, as
the husband of a mole on the eve of and immediately following her defection to the East.
Thus, Deighton gives Bernard Samson a personal history, a history that makes him a
more rounded and developed character than Deightons earlier creations. Samsons
children, who play only minor roles, become pawns in the struggle between Bernard and
his wife, Fiona, the new chief of the East Berlin station of the KGB. As usual, Deighton
takes many opportunities to expose the folly of the British class system, here in the
person of Fionas father, David Kimber-Hutchinson, the quintessential self-made man and
a latter-day Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. George Kosinski, Bernards brother-in-law,
and his irrepressibly promiscuous wife, Tessa, add to the familial constellation. Bernards
new girlfriend, Gloria, and his mentor, Silas Gaunt (Uncle Silas), round out his extended
family in England. Samson is a citizen of two worlds, complete with a set of Berlin
friends and acquaintances. Tante Lisl Hennig, an aged, faded beauty from the glorious
days of Old Berlin, runs a hotel in her grand old home, where Bernard spent much of his
childhood. One of his childhood friends, Werner Volkmann, an occasional agent with
whom Bernard works and upon whom he relies, has a new young wife, Zena, who has
her own agenda for making money through helping an East German agent, Erich Stinnes,
come to the West. To complicate matters even more, Zena is tied romantically to Frank
48
Harrington, head of the SIS Berlin Field Unit. Samsons third family is the SIS senior
staff, an uneasy family plagued by internal strife and competition in the wake of Fiona
Samsons defection. The dotty director general is propped up by his hatchet man,
Morgan, who takes great delight in opposing and tormenting Samson, Dicky Cruyer
(German stations controller), the American Bret Rensselaer, and Frank Harrington.
Samson is, naturally, under some suspicion following his wifes departure. Rensselaer,
too, becomes a target of suspicion as a possible second agent in league with Fiona and
controlled by an operative who too conveniently falls into Samsons hands, escapes and
seemingly drowns, and reappears in East Berlin so that Volkmann can find her. Deighton,
then, by situating Samson in these three sometimes overlapping communities, is able to
give him depth and dimensions that the anonymous spy, for example, does not possess.
Similarly, by developing and stretching his intricately woven plot over a lengthy period
of time, he depicts an even more complex, many-sided, comprehensive image of the epic
struggle between London and Moscow, played out in Berlin, Mexico, and London. That
struggle, in its simplest terms, arises from a Russian offensive against London, planting
first Fiona and then Stinnes. Stinnes, indeed, is a cool, calculating professional whose job
it is to sow discord and suspicion in London and to go through Londons files under the
pretext of helping to ferret out the second agent in place within SIS. Deightons mastery
of plot construction is clear as he weaves together the personal and professional
dimensions of Samsons lives, in a series of inevitable encounters that lead up to the
summit between Bernard and Fiona at the end of the trilogy to swap the now-exposed
Stinnes for the captive Volkmann at Checkpoint Charlie. Thus, the manipulation of
Samsons public and private loyalties is complete, and the action that began the work
comes full circle. This is not to suggest that the action is forced or that Deighton has
become trapped in his own conventions. Rather, he focuses on the probable and the
plausible and capitalizes on the extent to which seeming coincidences can be shown to be
the work of a careful, meticulous intelligence staff out to cover every possible
contingency. In this respect, Deighton as novelist is the architect who must first set up
and then conceal the true motives of his characters and must allow his protagonist to
appear to stumble onto the truth through a combination of hard work and apparent
coincidence. Deightons art consists of the careful arrangement of character, place, and
49
situation in an unfolding of narrative that is compellingly realistic, finely drawn, and

filled with plausible surprises.
Deighton brought Samson back in two later trilogies which develop the characters
of Bernard and Fiona more deeply: Spy Hook, Spy Line, and Spy Sinker (1988-1990), and
Faith, Hope, and Charity (1994-1996). Spy Hook is an exciting thriller about a conspiracy
of swindlers, but Spy Line is darker, finding Samson branded as a traitor and forced to go
into hiding in perilous Berlin. Samsons apparent betrayal by the Secret Service results in
soul searchings that enrich the cat-and-mouse game. Spy Sinker, meanwhile, is unusual in
that it tells the story of Fiona from a third-person point of view. The espionage adventures
ignite when Fionas sister, Tessa, is accidentally killed in a shoot-out with two KGB
watchers, but much of the story emphasizes the stress and pressures Fiona feels as a result
of spending years as a triple agent and longing for her children and friends. This novel
raises questions that made the third trilogy welcome. With danger and entanglements at
every turn, from the closed doors of upper-echelon meetings to a growing sense of
estrangement between Bernie and Fiona, Samson needs more than his namesakes
strength to pursue the conspiracy behind Tessas death in Faith, Hope, and Charity, so
that the title of the first book becomes a running theme for all three.
It is, however, in his use of personal history in his later works that Deighton
transcends the stereotypical espionage novel, which has its primary emphasis on action,
and becomes a writer of novels about people engaged in espionage. The distinction is a
useful one: Without diminishing the necessity for action, adventure, and forceful
confrontations complete with bullets and bloodshed, Deighton increases his hold on the
novelists art by the use of literary, historical, and cultural allusions, the invention of life
histories, the exploration of inner life, and the exposition of social and domestic
relationships. His later novels, then, represent a major artistic advance over his early (but
still classic) works.39
Funeral in Berlin
39
II, 196.
50
Funeral in Berlin was the third of four novels about an unnamed British agent.
The two preceding novels were The Ipcress File (1962) and Horse Under Water (1963)
and followed by Billion-Dollar Brain (1966).
The protagonist (briefly referred to as Harry at some point) travels to Berlin to
arrange the defection of a Soviet scientist named Semitsa, this being brokered by Johnny
Vulkan of the Berlin intelligence community. Despite the protagonists initial skepticism,
the deal seems to have the support of Russian security-chief Colonel Stok and Hallam at
the British governments Home Office. The fake documentation for Semitsa needs to be
precisely specified. In addition, an Israeli intelligence agent named Samantha Steel is
involved in the case. But it soon becomes apparent that behind the facade of an elaborate
mock funeral lies a game of deadly manoeuvres and ruthless tactics; a game in which the
blood-stained legacy of Nazi Germany is entangled in the intricate moves of cold war
espionage.
The plan is to defect the person by staging a funeral convoy, and he is to be
hidden in a coffin after having been administered a strong tranquilizer. To make the
orchestrated episode more convincing and also increase suspense, a military band is
present there to accompany the passing of the convoy in a rainy, cloudy day. Throughout
the novel, Deighton refers often to musical instruments (flute, bassoon etc) and musical
tones (vibrato, baritone, alto) to describe the voices of different characters. Moreover, a
song Variations for wind band by Schonberg, mentioned recurrently throughout the
novel is what gave Hallam away in the end (beside the obvious expensive changes in his
modest apartment, meaning he was bought). It was also Sams favourite song.
Every chapter title is a quotation from the rules of chess seen as a duel of the
minds, as well as the ending phrase referring to a change in tactics or a strategy in
progress. A pawn is seemingly the piece least important on the board and expendable in
number, yet it moves the furthest and quickest, in all directions, and if left to advance on
enemy field, it can reach the end and turns itself into a queen.
The mentions of pawn, King, Queen should be interpreted as metaphors in
Deightons book, changing places with the actual characters. (Dawlish sends his agent in
mission, saying: better by far to assign pawns to supporting roles, Vulkan is nicknamed King, Hallam apparently described as homosexual in a derogative way).
51
The U.K. publication of Funeral in Berlin brought on a lawsuit; at the novels

climax, the protagonist and Hallam meet at a fireworks party where they discuss the
hazards of fireworks. U.K. fireworks maker Brocks objected to this text, which
mentioned them by name, and was granted an alteration of the novel. The 1972 Penguin
edition had some dialogue deleted.
The original passage read like this:
'I personally have always been against it,' said Hallam.
'Alcohol?' I said.
'Fireworks night,' said Hallam. 'Once a year animals are frightened, children are
blinded and burnt. There are terrible accidents, hooligans take advantage of the occasion
to throw fireworks into letter boxes and put them in milk bottles. There are cases of them
tying them to animals. It's quite a disgusting business. The fire service always suffers
casualties,
the
casualty
wards
in
hospitals
are
overworked.
Who
gains?'
'Brock's Fireworks,' I said.

'Yes,' said Hallam, 'and the shops selling them. There is a lot of money changing
hands tonight. A lot of us at the Home Office are very much against it, I can tell you, but
the interests we are working against are...' Hallam raised flat palms in a gesture of
despair. 'They should pay,' said Hallam. 'They should foot the bill for all the damage and
accidents and burnt houses that are caused, and if any money is left over after that, it
could be paid to the shareholders.'
'But don't they make signal rockets?' I asked,
'Very few, my boy. I've been into the whole business; it is quite degrading that
these people make money out of it. Nasty. If the municipal authorities each organized a
firework display, that would be another matter...
After being edited, the passage ends at "Fireworks night."
A film version of Funeral in Berlin was made in 1966, starring Michael Caine as
Harry Palmer and directed by Guy Hamilton, a former intelligence officer who had
previously directed Goldfinger. Hamilton used his personal experince in the british
military intelligence to make certain modifications to the script, as stated by Michael
Caine in a short documentary film called Man at the Wall: The Making of Funeral in
Berlin about the production of the movie.The film manages to capture the bleak
52
atmosphere of the Cold War but is also filled with witty, humorous lines uttered by the
main protagonist, Harry Palmer.
Chapter IV.
Narrative style
1. Similarities in their narrative style
Apart from the fact that these novels represent the same political period of the
Cold War and the practice of espionage, the selected authors knew several foreign
languages, same as their hero-spies and used German, French and Russian words or
expressions throughout their books.
All three of them worked in public offices; hence the bureaucratic apparatus is
described in detail, with special emphasis on the elements of red-tape and clerical
occupation. The central offices have typewriters, sheets, manilla dossiers, file and
business cards, pencils, biros, fountain pens, stapling machines, inkstand, swivel chair,
inkpress, IN and OUT trays. Also, the secretary is an important asset to the dynamics of
53
such offices and operations. She knows all the routes, codenames of operations and
contents of files, takes care of the travelling arrangements and contacts people in field
etc. Whether it is Ginnie in Le Carrs novel, Jane in Deigtons, or Bonds secretary,
Leolia (beautiful and caring), or Ms secretary, Ms Moneypenny, who even holds a
military rank. Although at times they have to serve coffee or tea.
The heros physical appearance is described using sports vocabulary (mainly
boxing, horse racing analogy): strong, masculine figure, scarred or not, slim and alert.
Whereas the heros personality is unfolded step by step during tensed events, when he
acts according to chess or billiard moves: clever, inventive, bold etc.
Yet the mission is not viewed as an adventurous activity performed for fun, or for
enjoying its dynamics as a sport. But rather as a serious task for the benefit of a nation or
mankind in general, where nothing is more important than achieving the goal, even if it
involves casualties and it risks even the main characters death.
In the same terms, in the spirit of the metaphor of life as a dog eat dog world, the
landscapes, the scenery and habits or daily actions are described using fishing or hunting
vocabulary; the secret agent is sometimes on the run and always looking over the
shoulder. The agent must be on guard during an operation so as not to be uncovered,
caught or killed by the ones he follows, spies or deludes. Sometimes things do not happen
according to plan and the hero needs to improvise or take a shot in the dark.
The gambling analogy (whether it is hinted at horse race betting or poker games)
brings about the suspense and increases the readers interest in the mission (operation,
goal) at hand. It is not easy to follow the plans, sometimes people or things are not what
they appear to be, the hero has to develop strategies all the time to save his life and
protect the mission. There are many turns of events and barely in the end, the loose ends
come together.
The heroes and villains in these spy novels wear mostly casual, comfortable or
army clothes, except for special meetings in restaurants when they have to be elegant
gentlemen (i.e. mostly James Bond). Their clothes usually are drab and nondescript, like
a raincoat, wool suit, tie and a black cap or hat. They travel light and their luggage is
always handy to take on a mission, this translates also as they are like trained soldiers,
always ready to report immediately to orders.
54
The invented names they have to assume should be ordinary, very simple
(sometimes they sound more genuine then their real names), so as not to raise suspicion:
e.g. Edmond Dorf, Robert Lang. They also prefer to state the occupation of travelling
salesman or company director when pretending, as are general and meaningless at the
same time; the most common forged passports are with Swiss citizenship etc
The smoking and drinking habits are used almost the same as the directors
indications in a play, to pinpoint certain moments in time and pretexts to give insight and
reflect the heros disposition. If it rains, if he is on the run, bleak, bored, insightful or
apprehensive even.
Smoking is not just a recreational activity. It is quite masculine a habit and
mysterious at the same time. It is used as a mask for moments of silence, for
identification when strangers approach each other and do not have a pass code; to put up
a show, when no other scenario works. At the same time it helps with the narration,
creating suspense and anticipation before key moments.
Different brands stand for different nationalities, times, or quality status during an
operation. For e.g. in From Russia with Love, at some point a Russian colonel is
described using an American lighter, Zippo to light his Moskva-Volga cigarette. James
Bonds favourite brand of cigarette has three gold-rings on it for eccentricity, but also
smokes Gauloise. Grants admiration for Russians goes to such length that he smokes
Troika.
In Funeral in Berlin, the characters find each other in pubs, bars, hotels,
restaurant, offices, drinking tea, coffee, cocktails, etc
Hallam hides a pack of good cigarettes, counting them occasionally to make sure
they are still 20 pieces, and keeps horrible tasting ones for visitors, but he smokes or
borrows from Harry.
Le Carres heroes all smoke and drink heavily, but no brands are indicated.
Just as important for the progress of the action is the routine introduction of the
moment when the agent is talking on the phone, as anticipating a new sequence of events
or chapter (whether in the hotel room, in an office, at home, in the booth), asking for
coordinates, or just receiving details of the conspiracy (namely the secret operation to
be played on).
55
They all use a spy jargon when addressing their superior officer or connection,
coding their vocabulary to mean something else than what is being said: pass the Queen
of Spades and you are clean(about protecting an asset); somebody is very sick instead
of is dead; the doctor could cure you as in terminate you; to mate meaning to
overcome or overpower; to give him a ticket as in get rid of him.
The agents are advised not to have families or become attached to women, since
they are not to be vulnerable or victims of possible blackmails and kidnappings; hence
the reference to them as being lone wolves. (The only one who tends to get mixed up in
an unusual love-connection during his operation is Leamas, this also being his downfall).
The women hairdo, when describing severe-looking officers, is basically the bun
(Rosa Klebb), or the hair cut short, inspired by the fashion of Soviet wives. The pony tail
is a little more rebellious, but also shows youth and slight subordination (Tatiana, Liz).
Whereas the bait has to be sensual, hence the hair flows on her shoulders freely (Tatiana
is said to resemble Greta Garbo when she lets her hair down). Jonny Vulkans former
lover is Samantha Steel, but as a very sensual woman and very elegant for that time, she
is also the bait for Harry. The problem is she has a double identity, in some official
documents she is said to be a blond-haired American citizen, but in her bags she also has
papers identifying her as Israeli citizen (dark-haired). She is actually an agent of the
Mossad. The woman-spy uses her looks to get what she wants; whereas the man-spy has
to appear anonymous, plain and even dumb, so as to get under the radar.
The scenery is very modern and urban; the colour television had recently been
implemented, yet in all three novels, they show modern technology (TV, the phone, radio,
gramophone. recorded materials) as the centres of their lives. Moreover, the furniture is
created in such a way as to accommodate such means of communication and also
highlight them (the cabinet hides the TV set) etc. For instance, in Stoks room, there is a
cocktail cabinet resembling a small version of Kremlin in wood.
2. Differences in their narrative technique
56
Len Deighton and John Le Carr write in a documentary way, first person
narrations. They are both interested in the authenticity of the story. However at times,
some characters speak in aphorisms (Vulkan, Fiedler) and philosophical jokes (Stok),
which makes them seem artificial. As if things like describing capitalism as the two
villages depending on each other (one, depending on a river full of crocodiles where
villagers fished, the other selling wooden legs) or statements like: Communists have
strength in their in group, regardless of nationality and minorities have defined areas
of hatred had to be conveyed through a simple character.
Halfway through Deightons book, the hero is not called by his name, but
someone simply referred to by his alias. While Le Carrs chapters seem disrupted, yet
they are in sequence.
The beginning is abrupt; it goes directly into the subject. The descriptions are
sketchy, simply pretexts for developing a scene. The scenery, namely the room and its
furniture are presented cinematic, highlighting the comfort or modern elements of
technology: the microwave oven, but also the props outside, like the telephone booths in
the hotel lobby or out in the street etc.
The characters are seen cartoonlike or resembling caricatures (outlining strong
features or drawbacks). Hence, sometimes they are simply called by such nicknames.
(Grenade vs. Kadaver)
The main character presents the story, which abounds in dialogues and
instructions. The chapters are structured according to diary entries or resembling military
logs while surveying or flying.
They show how an agent is approached by the organisation, how he is trained to
take action, pass controls, resist during an interrogation, how he is given missions and
performs them, tries to divert the competitors agency or access information from the
enemy, and in the end withdraws or retires from the spying or intelligence activity.
Ian Fleming is more interested in entertainment aspect of the narration in the
detriment of realism. His novel is balanced and easy to follow. It starts with an
introduction; it has a distinctive plot, develops the action and events and ends quite
classically with a conclusion and a success. There are two heroes, the good and the
villain, both spies, both showing a high tolerance of pain, but seen in different lights. Red
57
Granit, the villain is beastlike; he becomes a Russian agent of his own will, offers to
perform killings for them (the SMERSH Department or Smiert Spionam, meaning Death
to Spies) because he has an innate violent drive, once a month, during the full moon. He
represents brute force, obedience and loyalty for the Soviet Union; he is given he name
Granitski. His opponent is the romantic hero, James Bond seen almost as a Prince
Charming, very strong, clever, and resourceful, who ruined many of the Russian impact
attacks, thus is seen as the enemy of the State and is hunted by the Russians.
Flemming presents a straightforward choice between good and evil, black and
white. Bond is established as a hero, by the contrasts between him and the villains in the
novel.
Le Carrs The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a critical reaction to the
glorified figure of James Bond. Le Carrs characters are meticulously described from a
human point of view, with weaknesses, problems and vices. The portrayal of Alec
Leamas is a more realistic one, his actions and settings are not as glamorous as James
Bonds ones. The story is mainly focused on the intellectual activity of the heroes and not
so much on action.
Deighton's protagonist, Harry Palmer also is depicted as an antithesis of James
Bond. He is not as stylish as Bond, portrayed as common man, a working class hero.
Both Deighton and Le Carr do not glamorize their spies, depict them in a
realistic manner and emphasize on the moral dilemmas that their characters have to
undergo, their actions are not presented as explicitly good or bad but rather as an
amalgamation, in shades of grey.
Alec and Harry tend to have mixed features, good and bad blended; hence they
are more realistic, whereas Bond is shining almost in generally white colours (the only
vulnerability he shows is being fearful during the plane storm for happening on Friday
the 13th). All three are field, operational agents (halfway desk agent maybe only Harry).
If Bond is the prototype of an elegant gentlemen, always fashionable and careful
about his appearance, Alec Leamas is the image of bankruptcy, neglect and alcoholism in
the making: skips meals because he cannot afford one, drinks heavily, does not shave or
change clothes when going out, cannot pay the electricity bill in a rented apartment. On
58
the contrary, Bond is well-to-do and has his own money or cars when travelling abroad in
missions where he checks in classy hotels, goes to trendy bars.
Another major difference between James Bond versus Alec Leamas (John le
Carrs hero) and Harry Palmer (Len Deightons main hero) would be that the first
character makes use of a lot of gadgets to succeed in his mission, whereas the other two
characters rely mostly on their instincts, witts and skills.
Bonds attach case passes for a handbag, but is quite heavy and dangerous, yet he
manages to take it in the plane with him: is packed with two rows of .25-ammunition
between the leather and the lining of the spine. Two Wilkinson flat, throwing knives are
covered on the sides, concealed by the stitches at the corner. The handle delivers a
cyanide death pill, pressed at a certain point. The top of the thick tube of Palmolive
shaving cream hides the silencer for the Beretta. The lid of the bag contains fifty golden
sovereigns under the welting (p.83). In the street Kerim pulls out a sniperscope with
infrared lens, a German model (p.125), while his walking stick turns into a rifle with a
silencer, instead of a rubbing tip (p.127). He used Bonds shoulder to steady it, targets at
the Bulgarian who tried to kill him and shoots him.
Even the male-female pairs that form fleetly differ. Tatiana is innocent and
sensuous at the same time. She seems to genuinely fall for Bond and he definitely enjoys
spending time with her as well, but not to the point of becoming seriously involved, or to
endangering his mission. Also occasional or better said circumstantial lovers for a short
period of time are Harry Palmer and Sam Steel. He admits to finding her attractive as she
is very beautiful and experienced in charming men. However as soon as he investigates
her, looks through her things and follows her around to find out she is still with Vulkan,
while also acting as an Israeli secret agent, he distances himself from her and manages to
blow her operation. Ironically, she remains under the impression she had fooled him;
views him as the nave, understanding man that would make a good husband, and crosses
the border, thinking Vulkan (now dead and in the coffin) is the tenacious man, clever and
shrewd like a shark, that would always be a great lover.
In Le Carres novel before Mundts trial, there are long chapters without dialogue,
just observations and indirect narration. Liz or Leamas are protagonists and the reader
simply witnesses and is told what happened to them.
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In Ian Flemings From Russia with love, the author is an outside, third person
narrator, great at storytelling, presenting beautiful landscapes and expensive hotels, rich,
gourmet meals and fancy drinks. An interesting supporting character like Darko Kerim is
also a great causer, who smokes a lot, drinks plenty of coffee when discussing serious
business, always has interesting stories to tell about life, women and his experiences.
In the three novels previously mentioned there are certain key elements that seem
to be used for enhancing the narrative technique and which are common to all three
authors, however they are presented differently.
For example:
- the prey and hunter dichotomy, taking turns, aimed in two or three characters
at the same time: Tatiana-Bond-Grant; Leamas-Fiedler-Mundt; Harry-Sam-Vulkan, but
also Hallam-Harry-Stok; not knowing who the seducer actually is and who the bait. They
each take turns to be hunter and the hunted.
Tatianas assignment is to fall in love with the best English spy and the object of
the operation is to give false information to the British. (Interestingly enough, the detail
on the edge decoration of the soup plate Tatiana has in the military camp shows wolves
chasing a galloping sleigh round the rim). At the same time, Grant is given the mission to
play as an English agent and kill James Bond. (p. 67). Meanwhile, Bond without any
mission is bored to death. Peace is killing him. He is a military same as Grant and
Tatiana, disciplined and trained hard. He does exhausting gym exercises in the morning
just to invigorate himself, to feel back in the action (takes a five-minute Scottish shower,
alternating very hot water with cold water). Whereas Bond wishes to get the Spektor, the
Russian secret typewriting device of coded information, which Tatiana promises to
deliver to the British in exchange for their protection.
This chase is also illustrated by the gypsy foretelling, warning twice Kerim: You
have the wings of death over you. And again before they go in the train: Kerim should
be aware of a son of the snow and Bond has to beware of a man owned by the
moon.(p.122)
- the Chinese boxes technique or the Russian dolls for that matter, when the hero
seems to be the voyeur into another scene and on the larger plane, we as readers look into
the first scene as well.
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The secret passage from Kerims office, takes them under the street level in an old
reservoir, filled with rats and bats, up to the offices of the Russian MGB, where with the
help of a navy submarine periscope they spy from a little mouse hole, watching without
hearing. (p.103) The silent dialogue is played out in such a way that the reader feels in
turn a spy or a voyeur, much like Bond and Kerim, who are spying and peeping at the
Russians. We spy along them through a crack.
And again, the episode mentioning the gold-framed false mirror on the ceiling in
Bonds hotel room (p.137). Behind it, two photographers sat close together in the
cramped cabinet de voyeur, unknown to Tatiana and James. Later, Bond realizes the
changing of the room was a trap and not an offer from the reception to be accommodated
in a better place, the nuptial suit. In fact his phone line was overheard all along by
Granitsky and they are even followed in the train.
One conclusion that permeates all three novels is that everything matters and there
are no such things as coincidences.
- the recurrent symbol to make the story come full circle:
From Russia with Love starts with Grants receiving another execution
assignment: that of Bond. Whereas in the end, Bond is struggling to breathe, under the
effect of the poison in Rosa Klebbs shoe.
Funeral in Berlin begins with a Daily Mail peeping its headline: Berlin a new
crisis, tucked behind the milk bottles, up the stairs to Hallams address in South-West
London. Even though the novel ends almost a month later, on 7 November, celebrating
the Bolshevik Revolution, the same issue of newspaper, now rainsacked and blown by the
wind, shows the same headline: Berlin a new crisis.
While the Spy Who Come in from the Cold, opens with the shooting of Karl
Riemeck trying to cross the border at the Berlin Wall, and ends in the shooting of both
Liz and Alec, trying to do the same.
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CONCLUSIONS
After the 1980s, when the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks finished and treaties
were signed by USA and Russia, a new period of dtente (or cooperation) established
between the two superpowers. The American writers approached this type of fiction as
well insisting on old and new fears or suspicions and became also successful, for instance
some of the present-day bestsellers are: Tom Clancy, Nelson de Mille and Robert
Ludlum.
The Cold War endures as a popular topic reflected extensively in entertainment
media, and continuing to the present with numerous post-1991 Cold War-themed feature
films, novels, television, comic books and other media.
With the 9/11 attack in 2001, the threat of Muslim terrorism imposed new security
policies for post correspondence, package shipping, travelling by plane, issuing visas and
62
biometric ID cards. These aspects sparked a new interest in espionage novel. For
example, the number of manuscripts filed for approval at CIA doubled during 1998-2005.
The newly developed applications of showing instant location on smartphones,
GPS cars or conveying personal details via wi-fi connections on social sites like
Facebook and HI5 expose to dangers, but offer at the same time the possibility of
scanning, tracing or keeping an eye on the bad guys; which makes it all the more
difficult for authorities to protect national and international security without interfering
too much in the intimacy of an individual.
Most literary critics believe that the world of spy literature is by definition
dominated by deceptions, betrayals and duplicity, but at the same time by the call to
patriotism, duty, ultimately being a space of duality and ambiguity. Thus in this field, we
can identify both products of propaganda, as well as creations of literary and ethical
value. Therefore the macrocosm of spy literature is on the one hand governed by political
ideology and on the other by national loyalty.
The most valuable works of this literary genre that I selected from the Cold War
era enable the identifying and grasping of the political, moral and psychological
significances of the informative activities, through actual reference to them.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brett Woods, Neutral Ground A Political History of Espionage Fiction, Algora
Publishing, 2008, New York
Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, Istoria oglinzii, Editura Univers, 2000, Bucureti
Monica Pillat, Cultura ca interior, Editura Vremea, 2001, Bucureti
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66

The Spy as a Fictional Character in Cold War Literature

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Introduction: The aim of the thesis

Working undercover means providing a genuine identity or presence to the person

only, as a genius in IT (good at networks, telephone barring, GPS surveillance, security

2. The spy in modern literature

Brett Woods, Neutral Ground - A Political History of Espionage Fiction, 8.

resolves such obstacles in violent twist of events or confrontations. However, a detective

Brett Woods, Neutral Ground - A Political History of Espionage Fiction 11.

Brett Woods, Neutral Ground - A Political History of Espionage Fiction 114.

Brett Woods, Neutral Ground - A Political History of Espionage Fiction 130.

Brett Woods, Neutral Ground - A Political History of Espionage Fiction 6.

Andrew Hammond, Cold War Literature Writing the Global Conflict 2

changes produced was a distinctively British version of alienation and marginality,

Andrew Hammond, Cold War Literature Writing the Global Conflict 6.

Berlin Wall, Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Berlin_Wall>

Andrew Hammond, Cold War Literature Writing the Global Conflict 6.

extraordinary good luck.The main protagonist reveceives his assignments from M,

From Russia with Love

The story centres on a plot by SMERSH, the Soviet counterintelligence agency, to

2. John Le Carr (penname for David John Moore Cornwell)

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

counterintelligence penetrants of English security forces. In pitting the ordinary field

situation in an unfolding of narrative that is compellingly realistic, finely drawn, and

The U.K. publication of Funeral in Berlin brought on a lawsuit; at the novels

'Brock's Fireworks,' I said.

2. Differences in their narrative technique

Alexandru Popescu, Cinci milenii de spionaj, Editura Cetatea de scaun, 2012,

Michael Barrett, Journal of Defence and Diplomacy, February 1984

Lee Horlsey, The Noir Thriller, Palgrave MacMillan, London, 2001

In Mystery and Suspense Writers: The Literature of Crime, Detection, and

Len Deighton. Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia

From Russia with love. Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia

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